Dave the lifekludger can’t help himself. He *thinks* he’s been having an emotional breakdown. But what he was *really* doing was re-inventing an entire industry.
I ended up spending my days with my head switched off in Second Life (SL). And it was my answer in this period, my therapy. I needed something that didn’t take any analytical brain power and yet could occupy me enough just to relax. I found a whole new side of me, a side that had been buried under that rock I talked of for 25 years. I knew from outset that the word ‘expression’ was a key, but didn’t know what that meant. SL gave me a new way of expression and of freedom from the constraints that come with my disability and those constraints I’d built myself as a way of either escape or coping.
I predict that years from now there will an entire industry and a shelf full of books about using virtual worlds such as Second Life as a path to therapy for all kinds of emotional and psychological problems. And Dave just happened to invent the whole shebang while he thought he was having some downtime. You just can’t stop some people. Even when they think they are chilling out they are breaking new ground.Â