Forty-three

In first life I was born on January 3, 1970, at 12.35 PM CET in Lund, Sweden. Which means that I am 43 y.o. today.

This is my very 43rd birthday so I don´t really know what to expect. However, 43 seems like such an extremely agreeable and nice number that I am thinking I may enjoy it.

I never really had an interest in age, neither my own or other peoples. Either we get along splendidly or we don´t, but age has nothing to do with it. Besides some people are born as old bitches (whatever gender they may be) while others are eternally young. I have always felt that the only alternative to growing older is worse.

Same Love

(via +Joe Jervis at J.M.G.)

On Dr. Butch´s Couch

From the American Psychoanalytic Association´s website concerning The Use of the Couch in psychoanalysis:

"Following Freud’s practice, many psychoanalysts recommend the use of the couch for their patients in psychoanalysis. To some onlookers, the practice appears arcane or puzzling. Why the use of the couch?

Most psychoanalysts find that the couch is helpful because it takes analytic patients’ focus off the external. Instead, patients turn their attention inward, to fantasies, daydreams, feelings. Dr. John Munder Ross (1999) notes that, in lying down, peoples’ perspective changes. They focus less on objects in the environment and more on images that arise from their own minds. Not bound by an awareness of the analyst’s facial expressions and gestures, the analytic patient is more readily able to imagine what the analyst is thinking or feeling, too, which enriches the experience of analysis.

In addition, many analysts find that they, themselves, work more productively when their patients use the couch. Not constrained by social conventions— maintaining eye contact, for instance— analysts can relax more fully. Therefore, they can focus better on what the patient is saying and feeling and resonate more fully with the patient’s spoken and unspoken communications. The couch, in essence, helps analysts and their patients immerse themselves in the extraordinarily rich world of the mind."

Top Ten Things I Hate About Myself

10. My overuse of exclamation marks!

9. My habit of singing psalms when I shower 

8. My obsession for tidiness 

7. My need for principles 

6. My Stalinist view on history 

5. My compulsion of over-analyzing E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G

4. My missionary tendencies
3. My soapbox-mentality 

2. My big mouth and small ears
and most of all
1. My mushiness and sentimentality

At Mirromere

The beautiful Calas Galadhon Park sims are closed for a month due to remodeling, but as a member of the land-group I still have access. It was extremely lucky for me because I needed to be at Mirromere today. Although I have a part of the memorial for Ars erected on the home sim, the memorial spot at Mirromere is still the place I go to when I feel the need to be closer to him. Ty Tenk and Truck Meredith have promised to keep me informed of any major changes that may be necessary.

After spending some time there I was calm again and realized that, no matter what, I would always trust in what my Ars and I had and what he had told me.

My Men Make Me Proud

Well, I must say that 2013 has already gotten off to the most amazing start.

"Bobby kisses Cortez during a play-fight at the Korengal Outpost, Afghanistan" (2008)
Photo by Tim Hetherington

First of all I was reached by the news, in an offline message when I got up in the middle of the night, that Guyke and Dej had made up again. When I logged in-world immediately after reading this Dej confirmed the news. I love both of the guys so much and it makes me so happy and proud that they settled this dispute.

I like my friends to be passionate but reasonable and rational. They both proved that they measure up to that! Quarrels can and will occur among such hotheaded people with strong feelings. I must simply learn to trust in their wisdom and not worry too much about it. Usually they will work things out nicely without my meddling, once they get a chance to think about it when they are calmer.

The other thing that has happened already this year is that Ziggy has decided to make an honest avatar of Guyke, after first robbing him of his precious virginity (which had been surgically restored in a costly procedure at some obscure Mexican sim). During the night Ziggy proposed to Guyke, who of course knowing I would never forgive him if he did anything else, accepted the proposal! Woot! Woot!

2013 is going to be an exceptionally wonderful year, take my word for it and remember you read it here first!

My Hopes for 2013

At the end of a year it is customary to express ones´s hopes and predictions for what may await us in the coming year. I will - a bit reluctantly - follow this tradition, so here goes. Excuse the naivety!

Universal
The universe is. It was here long before us and will remain long after we are gone and forgotten, in one form or the other. This year I am not going to be so presumptuous to make a prediction about it, I will instead merely express a hope.

1. I hope that the universe as we know it will still be.

Global
On the global level it is easier but also more difficult, because there is so much that is simply "wrong" with the state of things, we all know it but we do not know what to do about it or cannot agree among ourselves what is the best way to go about correcting the wrongs. However, here are some personal hopes and wishes that are at the top of my mind and that I choose to air here.

2. I hope that Syria will be liberated from it´s butchering dictator as soon as possible and that he will not be replaced by another dictator.
3. I hope that the Arabian spring continues.
4. I hope that President Putin of the Russian Federation and the rest of the Russian political establishment realizes that world politics is not a game.
5. I hope that The Peoples Republic of China realizes that it has a great responsibility for world peace and acts accordingly.
6. I hope the United States of America leaves its road to isolationism and takes its responsibility as the leader of the Western democracies seriously and passionately.
7. I hope that the North Korean dictatorship implodes.
8. I hope that the people of the world gain further understanding that we share a single ecosystem and that what each of us does affects others just as what they do affects us.

SecondLife
My wonderful virtual world, which is as real to me as my equally wonderful first world.

9. I hope the technical improvements we have seen will continue, little-by-little it does get better all the time.
10. I hope SecondLife will grow faster, better and stronger in every possible way.
11. I hope that Linden Lab will realize that it needs to improve its customer relations and work with the community as a whole instead of catering to the whims and wishes of a loudmouthed and technologically hostile minority.
12. I hope that Linden Lab will get better in collaborating with the residents on future developments and at communicating its intentions for the future to the residents.

Metaversal
This year I will refrain from making predictions about other blogs. Whether or not a blogger wishes to continue blogging is a strictly personal decision.

When it comes to my own blog, Bock in SecondLife, I believe that my experiences, thoughts and feelings are still relevant, if not for anyone else then for me alone. After all there are so many other blogs that through their bloggers superior knowledge, experiences and contacts are better at financial, informational and technological issues.

13. I hope that the blog Bock in SecondLife will still remain.

Personal
In 2013 I and Bock will be 43 and 6 years old respectively. We will have reached the points in our lives where we should become more mature and less flippant, where we should realize that lives are serious matters not to joke around with. Let me assure you that we do realize it, but we still choose to ignore it - completely.

14. I hope that I will remain in SecondLife.
15. I hope that I will have reduced my medication with antidepressants.
16. I hope that I will have sex again, in both lives but most importantly in first life.
17. Most of all I hope that my loved ones in both lives will be safe and still with me through it all.
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That concludes my hopes for the coming year.

I would like to thank you all for the support and love you have shown me and the blog in the past and hope you will continue to do so in the future.

I wish you all a wonderful, prosperous and happy new year and hope to see you all in the coming year. If we should not have met yet I hope we do, I am actually a nice guy most of the time - even if I say so myself.