Today, I fine-tuned my website and rearranged some of the links on the left for better relevancy. Thanks, Icon Serpentine, for recommending me to include the RSS and XML?links for those of you who want syndicated feeds. Yes, I am aware that some of the content (including the description on the page title bar) is not fully accurate in the present. Please allow me to explain…

It's a difficult thing for me, as I figure it would be for many people, to confront the harsher aspects of my reality. The "what's wrong".?I don't want to say I'm in denial about my hearing problems, but I don't know when I'll get my good ears back — if ever — and so I continue foward optimistically, knowing that so few things are for certain. I can't even say with certainty that I'll be in Second Life for a long time (say, several years). But if I was given that opportunity and if I could lead a happy and healthy life because of it, would I want to?

Yes.

Here's a theme I revisit, and I hope to not be redundant about it, but once more with feeling: it was only last May that hyperacusis ended my career of composing techno music. It hasn't gotten noticeably better.?For all intents and purposes, I say "I made music" in the past tense because I no longer do it. It's not who I am today. It makes me kind of bitter at times to even see links to my sonic creations on my own home page, because they seem so distant and out-of-touch now. Even talking about music can bother me because I don't like it being brought up. It makes me feel vulnerable and helpless.?At the same time, I realize I can't compartmentalize and split the offline Torley Wong and the online Torley Torgeson, because I need to be a full person — the complete human being, even if it means having the darkness mixed with the light.

Several months later, fast forward, I discovered Second Life in September and soon became Torley Torgeson. And then a couple of months more, Torley Torgeson Jr. came into being in the gridverse. From metamasticating mondo melons?to my ideas for improving SL to making cryptic statements, this blog entry may be?the most self-referential yet. I have fallen in love with?a Jaded?librarian, driven a car that matches my hair, and praised Linden Lab for not giving my life back, but for giving me a new life to live! And it hasn't even been half a year yet. Far more expansive than what I can express myself are articles that Zero Grace, Hamlet Linden, and Cristiano Midnight have written involving me.

This paragraph will be free of hyperlinks. I want to get this out of my system and onto the digital?display, and purge myself of what I've been holding back; my catharsis helping to liberate me from my?inner?conflicts.?Now that we're up to speed, I would like to clarify: look closely enough at me, and you will start to notice things. You will see frayed edges, torn pages, and eyes that sometimes shut in pain because the ears are not well. But watch long enough, and you will see the eyes open again, widely (like bigger than anime-size proportions), the fingers rapt to typeth, and a smile on my face.

My happiness far outweighs my sadness, and I'm happy to be where I am.

And if I had to do it all over again?

I would.