My name is Irena Morris. I am the person who created the avatar Eshi
Otawara and the person who allowed Eshi Otawara to evolve into a part
of my life and - apparently - many other lives. It took just about 3
years to bring Eshi from a no name newbie avatar club employee to Eshi
Otawara the artist, the brand, the dramatic little virtual diva who
not only acquired a sea of friends but even fans. They were 3 exciting
years of evolution with a climax I never imagined possible and many
quirks in-between. Couldn’t have helped those... I’d say they were a
part of the charm.

As the creator of Eshi Otawara and her work, I learned about myself
while I experimented with expressing myself within this environment. I
had started Second Life as a hobby mainly because I was freshly
widowed and needed social contact in a place that protected the real
person, Irena Morris, by keeping her inside a comfort zone.

Second Life allowed me to project myself onto an avatar that, at that
particular time of my life, did not require as much energy and effort
to keep in a socially acceptable psycho-physical shape. I am neither
the first nor the last person to have used Second Life for this
particular purpose, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Second Life provided me with a happy ‘home’ available to me as quickly
as I could hit the ‘log in’ button, and I grew accustomed to that. My
focus was entirely pointed to learning this medium so I could express
this non-verbal part of myself which was apparently in a very
alienated space.

Second Life not only became  a great tool for self-expression and a
dream I could modify to my liking, but also a network of great and
amazing people who have wholeheartedly accepted me and helped me to
restore my sense of self-appreciation and willingness to live which I
had misplaced within the darkness of young widowhood.

Many of these people are regularly welcomed into my ‘Real Life’ and
will forever be. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that these
people are ‘real,’ genuine, and that our bonds go beyond wire.

Many invested in me, opened their RL homes for me and without them I
would probably not have been inspired to create nearly as much as I
did in the past years. My Second Life work is something I have built
because of and for these people and their inspiring love for me. What
is now left of my Second Life work serves as a testament not only to
some talent of mine, but also the efforts of a group of people whose
hearts were open enough to have the capacity to experience it, love it
and the willingness to sponsor it, and take care of it when I could
not have – and the passion to use their precious time in order to
introduce more people to it by writing about it, alerting their
groups, taking snapshots and blogging their commentary.

Most of my very close friends know that I have been very unhappy with
having to maintain the ‘Eshi Otawara’ for some time now. All the
effort I had put into this has barely sustained me financially in RL,
but it also pushed me into developing some bad habits that took their
toll: Not sleeping enough, not eating healthily, not painting (which
was my idea of my future at some point), and generally not even having
the urge to change any of that because I have developed a habit of
living as Eshi more so than as Irena.

Eshi doesn’t need exercise to be healthy. She doesn’t need to ‘take
care of herself’ because I do that for her.  She needs nothing but
code, power and a computer to exist.  She is held by me and I power
her ‘life.’ I made her. But then….who gets to power my life whilst I
am powering hers? I have realized that at some point (not quite sure
when) Eshi Otawara – the character - became more important to me then
the source of her – me. My actions and the way I live my ‘Real Life’
attest to that.

This was just about the time when I literally started gagging upon
logging in - feeling like I am imprisoned within this character that
so greatly depends on things I have absolutely no opportunity to take
part in no matter how hard I try – not even as a stock holder. Second
Life became my dead end – and while I have nothing against it as long
as it can serve some purpose,  I feel an excruciating need to get Eshi
Otawara out of this place and claim her back for what she actually is:
My art piece, and just a part of me, albeit an important one, but
still only a part of me, and not my entire identity.

The math of this is very simple and I cannot come up with any more
excuses to keep creating and living virtually as Eshi Otawara. She is
not giving me back proportionally to the time and effort I put in. My
creativity is greatly appreciated which is very humbling – but I have
to put it somewhere where it will actually create something more
sustaining for Irena Morris than  ‘oohs’ and ‘aawes’ of binary
stardom.

I believe that if I grab any other ‘job’ with the passion I’ve had for
Second Life, I will become   quite happy with myself. That is what I
need. I need to do things which will make me be who I really want to
be – a young girl who wakes up in the morning and has a reason as well
as the ‘balls’ to get dressed, put makeup on, get her hair pretty,
breathe in and confidently step out the door and into the real world
which (with some luck, of course) will be able to pay me back for the
effort with stuff like physical hugs every day, non scripted smiles,
experiences of other human beings as awesomely flawed as they come,
walking in shoes that do get worn out and that do make my feet ache,
the beauty of pain after doing a few hundred sit-ups knowing that they
will actually make a difference in the way I feel about myself as
opposed to wishful waist slider going to the left with a mouse click
in right hand while with the left I am shoving a moon pie into myself
out of frustration over whether I will be able to scratch up 200 bucks
by selling a hundred dresses in Second Life since the economy has
taken the dive.

I will undoubtedly miss staring at Eshi and watching over her
shoulder… watching her blink her pretty little purple eyes with
sparklies in them… and the lashes and the dresses and the hair. I will
miss sending IM’s to my friends about having created something and
asking them to come see it and tell me if it is good or not… All that.
And I absolutely agree that this move was radical and will sadden a
lot of people. Trust me: nobody is sadder than I am, and yes, I could
have left all that I have made free for everyone to have if nothing
just to cushion the separation anxiety (I think I can say this without
coming out as pompous – as I have experienced this separation anxiety
numerous times  and I know what it is like to get attached to a build
or an avatar shape in SL). However - this cannot be an option because
all of that is still out there, in a form of, hopefully, uplifting
memories of lovely experiences which I HOPE mean more to people than
textured prims. Very few people have my builds out in the open.

All in all, I feel like I had to put an end to this cold turkey
because I owe myself the training on how to make myself strong enough
to be able to process ‘Real Life’ without seeking refuge within a
virtual world where everything is easier to deal with and where I
immerse myself to the point of losing all impulse to take care of my
RL self.

Who knows... Perhaps once I have created that Real Life I wish to
have, I will come back into some future virtual world and use it again
for some purpose. In order to do this, however, I had to pull Eshi out
of Second Life and release her out into the complicated, turbulent,
scary, damaging, unpredictable and fleeting Real Life. The Eshi in me
deserves that training if she is ever, truly, to become all she is
capable of.

I can only hope that my friends and all of you who are saddened by my
move will be able to reason out that I am not punishing anyone by
doing this, I don’t want to separate myself from any of you nor am I
trying to spit on Second Life in any way.  I am not destroying Eshi
out of spite.  Au contraire: I only deleted the avatar name from
Second Life to prevent my addicted self from getting stuck with living
my Real Life being habitually satisfied with identifying self as ‘Eshi
Otawara’ of Second Life, while shifting all the passion I should have
for the responsibility towards the body and life of Irena Morris into
the easy fun of being Eshi.

A few more things just to hopefully prevent speculation:

•       I am not disappearing from the face of the Earth. My email is :
eshi.otawara@gmail.com
•       I have not tragically died and left my legacy to anyone to be in
care of on my behalf.
•       There are a few pieces with transfer permissions and there are so
very few that I can name them all. If someone offers you a piece of my
work for a ANY price – especially if it is a build – DO NOT BUY IT
unless you have verified with me first via email that the piece has
not been copybotted.
•       I know EVERYONE who has ever purchased my builds and I know exactly
who has what permissions. Don’t let thieves rip you off.
•       I have NOT put anyone in charge of anything I have created. If you
notice anyone reselling Eshi Otawara stuff, it is very likely stolen.
Don’t buy it and kindly report it to Linden Lab and to me via email
(eshi.otawara@gmail.com) so I can sure the thieves for the sake of
fairness and other hard working designers in Second Life.
•       I didn’t leave in order to return and attempt to create a super
business under another avatar name. This is not a marketing stunt.
•       Eshi is gone and will remain gone. Please don’t make it harder on me
than this already is. I have deleted her entire inventory down to the
items in the library. Eshi doesn’t exist even as an avatar shape
anymore. I will not log back in to give or sell people things they
wanted to get/buy simply because the stuff doesn’t exist anymore.
Poof!

The Eshi Otawara name is NOT a Second Life avatar anymore.  Eshi
Otawara is an ongoing business concern owned by Irena Morris. If there
is honest opportunity for me in Second Life again – I am still an
artist and I will forever be one – I might hop in as another avatar to
do a job if the offer is decent and if I have the time.

Irena Morris is the creator and there is no need for an avatar starlet
in-between the art and the creator. My email and contact number (who
has it) will remain the same – my website will still be called
eshiotawara.com and everyone is welcome to use those channels to
communicate with me.

Wish me luck in recovery from identification with an avatar. It is
truly something I’ve wished for a long time. 

<3,
Eshi/Irena (read: e-reh-na)