A bunch of minor things happened to put me in a foul mood, so I am going to write them down in order to help myself work out the emotions involved and calm myself down.
It’s all VRChat’s fault. Well, and one other thing.
So I decided to give VRChat another try. It’s a great big virtual environment kind of like a modern version of Second Life.
It’s something I want to get into partly for the huge furry community there (one that skews a lot younger than my group of fuzzy friends) but mostly because it seems like a safe-ish way for me to expand my social horizons while still being safe at home.
That reminds me. I should give Discord another try some day.
For like, the fifth time.
What can I say, I am high strung and easily overwhelmed.
Anyhow, I log in to VRChat and try to find the basic tutorial that I did when I first signed up for the thing. I need a refresher on the fundamentals because I took that tutorial a long time ago and I don’t remember any of it.
But I can’t get back to it. I typed “tutorial” into the Worlds search and go to what it says is a tutorial world only for it to tell me exactly one thing (use WSAD to move – um, yeah, thanks, that’s the one thing I already knew) and then presents me with five portals to other worlds, none of which offer any kind of tutorial.
What a way to run a railroad!
I go into one of the worlds, and that turned out to be a mistake, because now I am surrounded by other players and have no idea what to do or how to do anything and I can hear other people talking over the voice channel and I want to join in but can’t and I am feeling very conspicuous and so my social anxiety went kaboom and I had to GTFO.
None of that is rational. But all of that is very me.
I tried several other supposed “tutorial” worlds and got the same result. So in disgust and despair, I hit Alt-F4 to give up for a while.
I Was out of there.
Then I tried to Google a tutorial. But then I discovered that apparently literally nobody online understands what a basic tutorial is, because they all start off assuming I know a lot of things that I do not.
So I got disgusting with that and gave up and decided to take a nap in order to help myself come down from this highly agitated state.
But just as I am settling down, the phone rings, and I have to scramble to get it. Turns out it’s not even for me, it was someone looking for Joe.
Great. Now I am even more agitated than before.
Now that I am somewhat calmer, I can see that the whole thing was really a product of my high strung anxious nature. If I had been able to be calmer about the whole thing and to have a sense of humour about it instead of freaking out, I probably would have been able to figure things out via just messing around with stuff.
But that’s not me. Not yet, anyhow. I only wish I had that level of confidence and equanimity. Instead, I am an anxiety ridden mess who is far too prone to panicking and bolting through the nearest exit for my own good.
And I get the feeling that if I want to get out of this tomb of mine, I am doing to have to just get used to being that way until I learn to deal with it.
I won’t get anywhere trying to pretend to have a different personality than the one I’ve got. I can only get ahead if I learn to deal with who I really am.
And that means leaving my island of artificially imposed “peace” and “calm” behind in order to live like an actual human being for a while.
Should be quite the trip.
More after the break.
Living in the real world
It’s a scary idea.
It shouldn’t be, but it is.
Because the real world is so much more stimulating than the simulated safety of my sad little sepulcher.. In here, I can completely cut out all stimulation except for that which comes pre-modulated through this god damned screen in front of me.
My whole frigging life has been screens. TV screens, computer screens, portable device screens. I barely look at the real world at all.
No wonder I am so afraid of it.
But I will overcome that fear. I will get a grip on myself and hold my little hand to keep me from running away so I can experience the terrifying stimulation level and see that it is really not that big a deal once I get used to it.
That all it’s going to take. Hanging in there while the fear washes over me, knowing that it will rise, peak, then fade away while I will still be here.
It’s just fear, after all. People deal with it every day.
And after that, I will be okay. The fear won’t be gone completely, in fact it will just start lurking in the shadows of my mind waiting for a chance to strike again.
But its back will be broken, Once I prove that it can’t kill me, only scare me, and that being scared by it is only a temporary blip that will soon pass, fear will not have the power to rule me any more.
Because this fear is nothing but the meaningless phantom of a temporarily disordered neurochemistry. It is less substantial than a hallucination, more temporary than a nightmare, and less meaningful than a drunken rant.
And I am its superior. I know that now. I am much stronger than it, and it knows it, which is why it had to keep me scared of it.
But tonight you die, my friend. For I am the stronger dream.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.