I've often found myself backed into a corner and forced not to fight my way out, but rather, to kick a hole in the wall and crawl through it—into another world. One reason why I initially got so into Second Life is because the text-based communication didn't hurt my ears, and because text also has a lastingness that I can scroll back and read over, taking time to interpret the meanings behind the words. As I've often written, I have hyperacusis, collapsed tolerance to noise. To this day, not much is known about it. While I hold out for a miracle sugery, my hands are in bad shape, due to repetitive stress injury.

Not wanting to have my communication shunted, I've been building up strength and resistance to sounds hurting my ears. I think on the whole, it hasn't actually gotten substantially better, but it's just… I get so persistent at times that I don't want to do nothing about it—I have a first life, and a Second Life, for that matter, to live!

In recent weeks, I've become increasingly determined to communicate. I did an interview with The Infinite Mind recently—a voice one—and you may have also heard my lil' podcast as part of a recent Linden blog entry. I've also been doing more company meetings a la VoIP, careful to pace and rest myself. If I can't type, perhaps I'll be talking more. All in all, I'll do whatever works for my work.

In some ways, and I see this wryly, it's like I'm hobbling on two crutches; one worse than the other (and about to splinter and break), so I lean to the other side predominantly. Now, the reality isn't that bad, and I needn't feel sorry for myself, but there are so many things it connects to.

One of them happens to be the debacle over having voice chat in Second Life. It's very heated, and a question noone's ever asked me which I've asked myself has been: "As a guy with a girl avatar, how do you plan to go about it?" As you may already know, Torley Jr. is my main av but I come in many shapes, forms (I wish I could say colors too, but they are—by far and large—watermelon). I suppose a natural progression, if I were to speculate, would be the gradual return of the father… Torley Sr. And right now in my storyline, we've got lone star Sheriff Tollie roaming the planes, big hat and starry-eyed glasses… a real cat-babysittin' charactah!

Whatever path I take, I'm going to keep on moving. I may make wrong decisions, but it's better to take my lumps and learn instead of stagnating in fear. And in some very incidental-but-deliberate way, I'm reclaiming my voice, in many senses. I know I'm being watched, but that's kinda exciting. I do know that keeping a blog to share who I am renews itself on an almost-daily basis as being one of the best decisions I've ever made.