The SLunkie Factor – Part IV: A Quantum of Freedom

(Continued from here.)

The day I posted Part III of this series last week, some time later in the afternoon, I was in SL, dancing at the Shelter, when suddenly my internet connection died. After I’d rounded up the usual suspects – reset the router, restarted the computer – it became clear that the problem was not on my end but my provider’s. I briefly considered calling the hotline, but then just shrugged, grabbed my guitar, played a bit, then went upstairs and took my dog for a walk. By the time I got back it was time for dinner. After the meal, my daughter wanted to watch a movie on tv, so I flopped beside her on the couch and watched “You’ve Got Mail” with her. After the movie, I came downstairs again to check whether my internet was back. It was, and had been for quite some time obviously, as my email program had been diligently downloading my mail every 15 minutes for a couple of hours or so. I went through my mail quickly, then switched the computer off and went to bed.

Why am I telling you this humdrum stuff? Well, as I lay there dozing off, it occurred to me that it wasn’t humdrum at all. It was really quite extraordinary, compared to what I would have done if such a thing had happened to me, say, one and a half years ago. Back then, I would have been on the phone right away, telling some poor guy or girl at my provider’s hotline how absolutely essential it was that they got their servers up and functional again this very minute. Then, I would have just sat there and checked every 30 seconds or so whether my connection was back up. As I would have been biting my nails all that time, playing my guitar wouldn’t have been an option. The second I would have been able to log on again, I would have been back in SL and stayed there until they called me to dinner, and afterwards my daughter would have been alone with Meg and Tom. I wouldn’t have gone to bed at such a reasonable hour either.

I think I’m becoming addicted again – addicted to pleasurable moments like that when I realize that there’s a quantum of freedom in my life now. Moments when I realize that I like being me again. Moments when SL is one of several options for using my time and I decide to do something else, not because I think I should, but because I just feel like it.

I wish I could give you some recipe, some fail-safe method for getting there, but I can’t. In my case, it looks as if this storm I went through just had to run its course. It’s true that I took certain measures to get my life back on track, but I honestly don’t know whether it would have been possible for me to do so much earlier, as much as I wish I would have. Still, maybe you’ll find a clue or two for yourself in my story.

Around the end of 2007, I was at the absolute low point in every area of my life. Everything looked hopeless. I knew we would have to negotiate a new mortgage for our house in the first half of 2008, and given the shape our finances were in, the prospect of losing the house loomed large. I knew that my wife, though she didn’t talk much about it, was inwardly thinking about how she would rearrange her life after our marriage was over, which she expected to happen within a year. My professional standing was nearly destroyed – several publishing dates had had to be postponed because I hadn’t delivered the copy on schedule. The publishers weren’t happy with me, and their patience was running out.

Killing that life insurance took a bit of pressure off the cooker I was in. The money didn’t take us all the way back into the black, but at least we were operational again for the time being. The threat of losing the house was pushed back, and we were able to make tentative plans for going on vacation that coming summer.

That vacation was my deadline. Things had to change by then. If I didn’t catch up on my work backlog by then, not only the vacation wouldn’t be happening, but my professional life would be over. If I couldn’t give my wife some reason to put new faith in our marriage by then, it would be over, too. Of course, I would have to find some new faith in our marriage myself first.

Believe it or not, even then going cold turkey on SL entirely wasn’t an option I could seriously think about. I just couldn’t face it. I saw a therapist a couple of times in early 2008, and his way of summing up our talks was to say that I didn’t know anything about where I wanted my life to go, except that I wanted to hold on to SL.

Honestly, if cold turkey had been my only chance, I don’t think I would have made it through. I admire people who, at the height of their addiction, are able to pull the plug and leave SL totally. I think it’s a truly heroic deed. I wouldn’t have been up to it.

Interestingly, in the aforementioned Handbook of Psychotherapy, I had read that, contrary to other addictions like alcohol for example, going cold turkey isn’t necessarily the recommended course of action in the case of an internet-related addiction. One of the reasons was, if I remember correctly, that you can’t effectively put the “drug” out of your reach if living without a computer or internet access entirely isn’t an option. That was certainly true in my case. I spend my whole day at the computer, and I need the internet for my work. Had I gone cold turkey, relapse would have been only a mouse-click away every single second of my working day. The odds against that going well for very long would have been just too high. So I didn’t make any heroic decisions. I thought I’d be much safer if I could find a way to live with SL without it sucking up all my RL.

The Handbook had other practical bits of advice for internet addicts, though, such as not upgrading your computer to accommodate your on-line games, setting alarm clocks etc. It was too late for me not to upgrade, and I had tried the alarm clock thing with unimpressive results. In my experience, an alarm clock can be a good aid, but it won’t help much if you just set arbitrary times. You need specific objectives that give you a purpose for which you set your clock.

For me, in a nutshell, it came down to focusing on the positive instead of the negative. In other words, focusing positively on doing things, such as completing a specific amount of work, helped me more than focusing negatively on not being in SL. So when you set an alarm, do it not to stop being in SL, but to start doing some specific other thing. That other thing very often was work in my case of course, but it was just as important for me to deliberately make room for things I used to like doing in my spare time, such as reading, watching movies, playing the guitar etc.

From about March to mid-July 2008, I had one specific goal to focus on. I had to get out from under those deadlines. I had to complete these long overdue projects by July 11 – the day before we were planning to leave for the island – or I would have lost the game. There was no room for negotiation anymore, not with my publishers, not with my wife. So it was sheer pressure that forced me to get down and tackle the work. It cost me enormous energy because I hadn’t really found a livable way to fit SL into my life yet, so I just slaved away while RL and SL dragged me in opposite directions. Nothing had really changed yet. I just did the work because finally I really had no other choice left.

But something did change while I was at it. When I buckled down and started to do the work, my confidence that I would be able to do it was zero. Then, page by page, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, it slowly dawned on me that I could. It nearly killed me, but I was making progress. After a while, reaching the goal didn’t look like a wild wishful fantasy anymore. It began to look as if I might just make it. Gradually, slowly, I began to believe it.

Some time in April, an old friend took me to see James Taylor on stage in Frankfurt. The concert was great, but our talk during the one hour drive from his place to Frankfurt, over the meal we had afterwards and during the drive back was even better, though it didn’t quite seem so at the time. It was basically me letting off steam and him listening. I was playing my own devil’s advocate and told him all the things that I found frustrating in my marriage and all the reasons why I thought I wanted out of it. The poor fellow must have found it all terribly depressing. After we’d said goodbye in front of his house, it was another one and a half hours’ drive home for me. Alone in my car, a calm came over me after the rage. I can’t really explain it. Somehow all the negative things I’d been saying to him about my marriage suddenly seemed strangely inconsequential to me. By the time I crawled into bed in the dark early hours next to my wife who had been my companion for more than 25 years now, I had stopped doubting. This was something worth saving. It was worth making an effort. She deserved giving our marriage my best shot, even if my best shot right now might turn out to be a dud. I knew now that I was going to try.

July 11 came, and I had made my deadline by the skin of my teeth. I cannot describe the relief I felt while we were rolling north toward the coast. Three weeks on the beach lay ahead of me, the pressure that had become my constant companion was finally off. My wife seemed to have noticed that the wheel had begun to turn. She’d started to believe in us again. Of course, there would be no SL for 3 weeks either. I was amazed when I realized that this didn’t bother me at all. I still didn’t want to give SL up, but staying away from it for a while was not such a scary prospect anymore. SL wouldn’t be going away while I was gone, after all. And afterwards, when we got back, I would be able to make a new start with a clean slate.

During the vacation, I made two small but important decisions regarding the way I would re-order my daily routine after my return. They sound ridiculously simple, and maybe they are. The first had to do with my realization that one of the things that had caused me to want to escape from RL had been exhaustion. So I decided to lower the bar a bit. I reduced my daily quota a little. Not much, just a notch. But that notch made the difference between just a bit too much every day, which translated into a burnout over the long haul, and a very manageable amount of work. The other decision was that I would no longer log on to SL first thing in the morning. I set myself a rule: no SL or other distractions until I had done at least half of my quota. This sounds like a no-brainer, and indeed the idea wasn’t new, but now I saw a chance to actually stick to it.

I can’t claim a perfect score, but on the whole, I kept the rule. My work got done every day, and within weeks, it even got done in such good time that I had plenty of time left for other things. Boy, did that feel good! Being in charge of my life again after feeling powerless for so long was one of the best experiences I ever had. And it’s still a great feeling, even after I got used to it. Within months, our bank account showed distinct signs of recovery, too. And the depressing cloud that had lain over our marriage for so long gradually dissolved. After a year, it now seems like a bad dream.

I still don’t want to leave SL, although the thought of leaving isn’t really scary anymore. What keeps me there is my friends, especially my best friend Renn and all the wonderful, crazy people at the Shelter, my beautiful home at Kingfisher Island, and the playful creativity. But it no longer feels as if my identity is bound up with it. Dylan is here with me now, so I can be whole without SL.

I don’t make jokes about RL anymore though.

I’d like to end this posting and this series by sharing a song lyric that sums up how I approach every day nowadays and which I hope will be an encouragement for you. I’m not sure who wrote the song; there are several versions of it around, but I first encountered it in Tommy Emmanuel’s beautiful a cappella version. It’s called “Today Is Mine”.

When the sun came up this morning I took the time to watch it rise.
As its beauty struck the darkness from the skies.
I thought how small and unimportant all my troubles seem to be,
and how lucky another day belongs to me.

And as the sleepy world around me woke up to greet the day,
and all its silent beauty seemed to say:
So what, my friend, if all your dreams you haven’t realized.
Look around, you got a whole new day to try.

Today is mine, today is mine, to do with what I will.
Today is mine. My own special cup to fill.
To die a little that I might learn to live.
And take from life that I might learn to give.
Today is mine.

With all men I curse the present that seems void of peace of mind,
and race my thoughts beyond tomorrow, envision there more peace of mind.
But when I view the day around me I can see the fool I’ve been.
For today is the only garden we can tend.

Today is mine, today is mine, to do with what I will.
Today is mine. My own special cup to fill.
To die a little that I might learn to live.
And take from life that I might learn to give.
Today is mine.