It is hard to loose your sense of joy. I believe joy is more of a natural state, rather than something you strive for. In other words, joy is suppressed out of you by events, conditions and people. And if that is true, then you would have to remove the things that are suppressing you in order to get back your joy.

I’m calling the past couple weeks “My Blue Period” because I was very unhappy for a long time. I have tried to go back and figure out where it began, but it wasn’t about one issue, it was about waves of issues over a period of months. My joy was suppressed by people who did unkind and hurtful things to me and my friends. It was also about conditions I had no control over, like my video card problem.

My blue period officially began when I left SL a couple weeks ago, and it ended on Monday night. I’ll never discuss the issues that drove me out of SL, but I’ve either eliminated or distanced myself from the people who were involved. And I’ve corrected many of the troubling conditions that increased the sense of being out of control. I’ve also looked at my own foolishness and selfishness.

The things that happened are harder to deal with because they are embedded in your mind. I am way too sensitive a person. I empathize way too much. And things that happen stick with me way too long. I could not free my mind from the mental weight of those past events. It took that rampage of dance and recklessness and humor and camaraderie on Monday night to blow it all away. I haven’t forgotten what happened, but those events no longer have power in my life.

(Note to self: try to remember these lessons in the future.)