Social Networking

Avoid the Pitfalls of Isolation

I discovered a whole new world this week: lonliness. It's not a lot of fun.

Even if you're not a full-time writer (and if you're writing short stories, you probably aren't), the time you spend with your word processor or pen and legal pad or crayons and butcher paper is solitary. I've met few people who can write in a crowd - a party, for instance, or your favorite bar on a Friday night.

We write as we dream - alone. And by the way, how many of you actually have a favorite bar?

It's a stereotype, but there is truth in it: a lot of writers are wallflowers. Introverts. Internal people living internal lives, scratching at the skull-cage, allowing people to know us only through the words that fall through the bars.

Seven short months ago, I was an active duty member of the Air Force. I had a peer group whether I wanted one or not - my work buddies. I was second in charge of 50 people. On work days, there was no shortage of people to talk to.

At home, I have my family. Between the two, I was more than happy to spend as many solitary hours as I could, getting stuff out of my head and onto paper. In fact, I felt pressed for time to write.

When I retired, that all changed. I work at home now, keeping this website, Spacesuits and Sixguns, and several other projects afloat. I'm here every day. I work in my office basement.

It's great to be able to spend more time with my wife and kids, but my "work" peer group is effectively gone. I still know people at the Air Force base, of course, and we get together occasionally. But those relationships were bonded by the work we did. I'm not doing that anymore. We're drifting away from each other.

Until recently, that was fine. I was working a lot, building my new business. I needed the time to reconnect with my family after working a job that kept me away from them four days out of every nine. Those things took priority. They commanded my focus, and nothing was lacking.

But things settle over time. I'm in great shape with my family. The business requires less daily upkeep than it used to. There is more time in my day, which is good.

But there were no people around to spend it with. And that was not so good.

This made me realize that there must be writers out there who feel even more isolated than I did - single people, for instance, with no close family relationships to help them through the lonely hours. People who feel uncomfortable going to bars or even singles groups in their towns. Lots of us feel uncomfortable in social situations; it's that "outsider" vibe that makes us effective observers, and gives us the necessary distance to do what we do.

But it can be crippling emotionally. Even the most introverted among us need to have someone to say hello to on occasion.

I'm a pretty social creature, as writers go; twenty years of military service gave me a greater appreciation of the life that happens outside my head. I'd socialize in town, but I don't live in a place that has a large number of people my age who are interested in the things I'm interested in.

For me, online social networking was the answer.

I've had a MySpace page for quite awhile, and it's great for keeping up with my friends in far away places. After 15 years in Europe, there are a lot of those. But there's no immediate feedback. MySpace has chat functions, but it's not organized. You just duck into a "room" and talk to whoever is there.

I'm not talking about MySpace, Facebook or Flicker. I'm talking about a place called There.

There is one of many examples of online communities called virtual worlds. Second Life is probably the most popular. Virtual worlds are computer simulations of real places inhabited by avatars, or virtual people. Put simply, it's chat with pretty pictures.

I knew what chat was - I met my wife through MIRC, the venerable standalone chat program developed in 1995 by Khaled Mardam-Bey. Popular IM clients available through MSN and Yahoo were developed from this example.

Virtual worlds, however, take this principle to a completely new level. In worlds like Second Life and There, you can create a persona, move around a virtual world, meet people in a variety of locations (real people, not the computer-controlled characters you might find in a computer game) and interact with them.

If you're a bit shy even with computerized anonymity to protect you, there are organized events every day aimed at bringing people together. If you get invited to a "virtual" party and you stand in a corner and don't say anything, I guarantee at least one person will walk over and start a conversation.

My experience in There has been great. In the four days since I signed up, I've met over a dozen people (and added them to my "buddies" list, which allows me to contact them when they're online). They're all over the world - Wales, Australia, New Zealand, America - but with the press of a button, we can all be at a "virtual nightclub," listen to music together, talk, laugh, and get to know each other.

Staying social means new writing ideas. It refreshes your mind, gives you perspective, new stories, new characters. We're writing about life, after all. There are a million ways to live it. Virtual worlds can be an opportunity to live it in a way you'd never thought possible.

Beats the heck out of old Knight Rider re-runs.

There has a free basic package you can try out. If you really like it, $9.95 gets you a lifetime membership. No, they're not paying me for the plug. I hang out there - and I love it. If you drop in, look for me. I'm DMage.

You can find out more about There and other places at http://www.virtualworldsreview.com.

Return from Social Networking to Inspiration