Caleb Booker

Onder Skall.

I’ve been living under that name for awhile now. I’ve made friends with that name, had fun with it, met some of the most incredible creatives on the planet, and built a bit of a writing career with it as well.

Deciding to call myself “Caleb Booker” now, after all this time, isn’t an easy thing to do by any means. It’s not that I’m shy, just that it feels unnatural.

It feels unnatural to use my real name. Well now. If that’s not a sign of the modern age I don’t know what is.

When I first established the Onder Skall account I fully expected to abandon it. I had already done so three times in the past for Second Life alone, but alter-egos have always been extremely disposable for me. I’ve been so many other people over the past decade or so. Personas have been like clothing- you pick them up, try them out, and then toss them when they start feeling a bit worn or dated.

You can’t do that normally. In the real world if you experiment with a different attitude on life, a different world view, a different level of energy or different habits, people start to think there’s something wrong with you. In real life, people like consistency. They like to know what to expect. Many refuse to grow simply because they don’t want their growth judged by anybody - especially their loved ones.

So I’ve been enthralled with Web 2.0 and the wonder that is this great, anonymous network. I’ve been proud, humble, pious, wretched, ambitious, complacent, domineering, submissive, cruel, and kind. I’ve preached, and I’ve kept my mouth shut. I’ve been spiritual and practical to a fault. I’ve been creative, and been a simple fanboy. I’ve tried as many things as I could find out about. I’ve lived as many ways as I can.

Whenever I thought I really understood what it was to live whatever I was living, I’d abandon that whole life. The attitude, the name, the friends, the world or community or social app, and move on. Rarely did I bother to leave a trail.

Except that… well, something started to happen around the time I rezzed Onder Skall for the first time. I was getting tired, I think. This constant sloughing off of my own past was very freeing, but rebuilding again and again, establishing a reputation, finding the most fascinating people, striving for understanding by living what they lived and seeing what they saw… it was a lot of work. I started wondering what it would be like to stay one person for awhile and maybe even to find out what it would be like to just be “me”… whoever the hell that was.

I decided that if I was going to stick with this Onder guy for awhile, I’d make two rules for myself:

1. No guilt and no regrets. “All you can do” is all you can do, and “all you can do” is enough. If you mess up, you mess up.
2. Don’t hold back. Chase down the cool, and build the best damn life you’ve ever built. Make it count. Go.

Knowing that being completely honest about who I was meant being occasionally, inadvertently offensive, I affixed horns to the avatar. Anybody in the habit of being specific about their point of view is going to, eventually, offend somebody. I planned on not feeling a bit of guilt about that.

Even though these two rules have worked out well so far, I always had this idea in the back of my mind that I could walk out if things got too hot. Saying: “Hi, I’m Caleb Booker, aka Onder Skall” marries the real me to the avatar and everything I’ve had Mr. Tall-N-Pale do. Like as not, I’m Onder Skall for good now.

I’d better start applying those two rules to my real life, too. Sucks that horns aren’t in fashion.

Posted on June 17th, 2007 under writing. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.