I looked back to this blog and let out a small sigh for what
I hoped would have been, and I apologize for that, and then lean back and SMILE at what was.
It was mid May since my last serious writings, and if I recall
correctly, just going into the May Day and Half Way There Faire, where
it all changed.
Up until that point I'd been giving my best as the off
season coordinator and moving into the Social Media PR role for the committee
as the season launched, and having the time of my life, helping where I could, trying
to stay on top of the 100's of team events going on around Relay. Not an easy thing
to do while trying to taking a college course in Advertising. That winter, I
was finishing up the second term or four and they were really pushing the assignments
at us. No big deal at my advanced age of 50ish. After 15 years of doing contact
design work in automation equipment design, wearing many hats and long hours on
end part of the job description. May
comes along and I finish the winter term, get lucky helping a friend do a
renovation job during the day, Relay all night long and then that wrap up party
for the Half Way There Faire.
I often wondered what it be like to bear witness to an idea,
one of those defining moment ones. I witnesses a bit of that, that night.
Zander was on the air, talking like he does about Relay that he and so many
other do, how every Linden matter, that it doesn't matter if you donate to a
big team or small team, it all goes to the same place and that all teams should
be proud of the work they do, regardless if the raise a million or one Linden.
Next thing you know we are rezing team kiosks who haven't reached Bronze level
and we begin what was eventually termed "Bronzing" and that we are
one team in Relay and so was born the One Team Ideal.
That Ideal fueled a good many souls that night and if I
remember over the next 4-6 hours Bronze something like 20 teams. I just
remember laughing hysterically behind the keyboards, never in my life have I
seen the likes of this. That ideal also lit a fire under a few others and over
the remaining of the season Bronzed the remaining teams on the roster. Truly remarkable.
That One Team Ideal changed me as well and gave light to an
idea I've had been thinking about for so time. More about that later,....
One or about late June, right after walking the Relay here
in my home town, another defining moment comes along in SL. Now as you all know
whom do work around RFLofSL, we are a big group, many people we know because
they are the front runners and we know them well from all the speeches and
interviews they give, other just because they are everywhere giving it their
all, and their name is everywhere in IM's and local chat and you just get to
know them. Well late one night, one of
the later asks me to dance, and we start to talk.
A week later, we are going steady, but Relay weekend two
weeks away and the craziest time for my role. Relay comes and goes, and I do
have one of the best Relays I have ever experienced, better than my first
Relay, one the year before, when on or about 3am, my time, and I saw there was
not letting up of the number of people that were out there, and I saw how big,
this Relay, really was, and for the next four hours cried buckets of tears, in
the dark of my room, by myself. I regained my composure in the waning hours, until
the empty table ceremony, and that was that, over the edge Niagara Fall I go.
This past season, I knew what was coming and ready for it, and I really got to
enjoying it deeply, all of it. AND I had some one new in my life, I could
really share that experience with.
I no sooner recover from that incredible, what was a 35 hour
caffeine fueled marathon of HOPE, that I discover a new Relay about to take
place on another grid, recognize a few names on the committee and just had to
check it out. Next thing I know, I'm helping launch a brand new Relay
organization in their inaugural Relay season, with a pile of work yet to be
done, with a whole new group of people.
September rolls around, college starts back up for the last
two terms, were when I though the work load was heavy at the end of last
winter's term, they wallop you on day one of this third term. I'm helping launch
a new Relay at the same time, all the while developing a very interesting and
unique relationship with a beautiful person.
When I look back at that incredible history of Relay in SL,
I often dream, what it would have been like that first season, just like I
wonder what it would be like to have been at Baker Stadium at the University in
Tacoma Washington that one May evening in 1985, I GOT a bit of that experience
at our Relay in InWorldz.
Very rich, very rewarding experience. After 8 months of
doing a fully time college program or full time employment and doing 8 continuous
months of Relay work, walking at 3 different Relays, that moment when I got the
chance to share by reading the Empty Table Ceremony of the handful of friends
was the finest moment of my Relay year.
And to smother all that in hugs and kisses our love for each
other grows into a skeeee one Thanksgiving dinner party being shared with all
our friends.
So when I say WoW, I really mean WoW.
Now I find myself having just written my last test and
handed in my last assignment for this term today and the last 12 incredible,
insane months are almost behind me. I have a few weeks off until the new year
and last college term, a small job to help someone lay a new floor in a few
rooms and a small website to build over the holidays.
Come the new year, I have the last term of my program that centers
around a 5 week work placement in midterm for what is called the Cap Stone Project.
I have a wedding to co plans for Feb 23rd and a Relay For Life of Second Life
team to build before that season launches and I am certainly doing the committee
thing again for IW, but more about those later ...