WARNING: This is yet another one of my Ryan-Schultz-patented meandering editorial blog posts, written during the week I turn 62 years old. I promise you, I will soon return to regularly-scheduled programming about (as the tagline of my blog now states) “News and Views on Social VR, Virtual Worlds, and the Metaverse, plus Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI’s Impact on the Metaverse.” (Hey, at least, this time, I didn’t write a whole goddamn paragraph for the blogpost title. 😜)
My birthday always falls in the very coldest of winter weather here in Winnipeg, and today has been the coldest day this season by far:
According to the Environment Canada website, with the windchill factored in, it feels like -48°C (that works out to -54°F for you metric-system-averse Americans). Even worse, it’s going to stay this cold for at least the next seven days, according to the forecast:
This is the time of year when we intrepid Winnipeggers, bundled up in layers covering every square centimetre of skin except for the eyes, stumble between our homes and our cars, and then rush from our cars to our workplaces, mumbling the following hallowed mantra: “noearthquakesnovolcanoesnoearthquakesnovolcanoesnoearthquakesnovolcanoes….“
But fear not! While I beaver away in my (thankfully heated) cubicle at the University of Manitoba Libraries, I am surrounded by the sights and sounds of gentle waves rippling along a sandy beach in Bora Bora, one of the Apple Vision Pro’s expertly-designed immersive Environments:
The clouds gently hover, and the palm trees sway, as I work away on my MacBook Pro, using the Virtual Display feature in my Apple Vision Pro headset. Simply by reaching up and turning the upper right knob on my AVP, I banish my drab workspace surroundings in wintry Winnipeg, and replace it with a tropical paradise!! (Drinks with umbrellas not included; they would frown upon that at work.)
I have already written at length about my continuing neck and shoulder pain, due to a couple of deteriorating joints in the cervical part of my spine, the first serious sign that my aging body is starting to wear out. However, having now had some everal months’ experience with this discomfort, I now know that the two biggest triggers of that pain are:
- Sitting too long in front of a desktop computer or notebook computer, hunched over my keyboard; and
- When I get stressed, my neck and shoulder muscles tend to tighten up, and soon my shoulders are aching.
So, I now spend between 4 and 6 hours per workday using the Mac Virtual Display on my trusty Apple Vision Pro headset with my MacBook Pro, because I have discovered that, instead of looking down at a small screen at arms-length, my neck gets less sore, and I can work for longer stretches, looking up and ahead at a large, clear, ultra-high-definition screen hovering in the space over my desk, which is designed to appear as if you were looking at it from about 1.8 metres/6 feet away from my eyes:
Focal distance in the context of VR headsets refers to the distance at which the lenses allow your eyes to focus comfortably. In the case of the Apple Vision Pro, the actual focal distance is set around six feet.
This means that, regardless of the virtual distance of an object in the digital space, your eyes will focus as if that object were six feet away.
Also, when I upgraded my AVP from the first edition (with the M2 graphics processing chip) to the refreshed model (which contains a top-of-the-line M5 chip), I noticed that the eyestrain I used to experience after about an hour and a half while wearing the unit has completely disappeared. Hooray! And the new dual-strap knit band fits much more comfortably on my big fat head. Aside from the occasional neck-wrenching mishap, the Apple Vision Pro is worth every single penny I have spent on it. And I will be first in line to purchase the next edition of this wonderful headset. As I said before, I am all in.
Thankfully, I have finally received the final report from the Ergonomics Office at my university, with a detailed shopping list of recommended equipment to purchase. Like many of my younger work colleagues, I will be getting an adjustable-height sit/stand desk, risers to place my MacBook Pro and my brand-new Dell Windows notebook at the proper eye height, new desktop monitor holders and keyboard trays, etc. I am also learning (with the help of my ergonomist and my physiotherapist), how to take regular breaks, to stretch, walk around the office, and do some neck, shoulder, chest, and upper-back strengthening exercises.
The good news is that, because of all these changes, I am now in less frequent pain than I was a few months ago. But it has come at a cost. You see, I need to save what I like to call my “good neck” hours for my paying job as an academic librarian, which means that I have has to cut back significantly on my extracurricular, after-hours activities that used to require me to spend similarly long stretches of time sitting in front of a desktop computer at home.
One of those activities that I have had to cut back on is, unsurprisingly, my beloved virtual world of Second Life. Trying to navigate my small army of avatars and alts through all the Advent calendars and Christmas gifts in December just about did me in last month, and I have decided that my body is telling me that I desperately need to rebalance my real life/Second Life ratio a little bit, and spend more time in (gasp!) the real world. 😜
Speaking of the real world, I have maintained my boycott of mainstream social media platforms, in order to continue to focus on my good mental and emotional health. And for the same reason, I am not really paying attention to the traditional news media right now, either; if I have zero personal control over it, I simply don’t want to know. Every so often, my eyes hover over a newspaper headline at the supermarket checkout line with the latest story about Trump and Greenland, I grimace and roll my eyes, and I promptly move on with my day, focusing on those things I do have some control over (like my job, my friends, my community, and my obsessive little hobbies like Second Life). I have found that, simply by avoiding toxic social media and if-it-bleeds-it-leads news media and the doomscrolling both trigger, I have never been in a better headspace overall, and I intend to continue this approach moving forward into what appears to be yet another year of batshit craziness, train wrecks, and dumpster fires.
I find I don’t miss Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X/whatever the fuck Apartheid Clyde is calling it this week, at all, and I spend precious little time on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Substack (although I do check the latter from time to time, mostly for AI/GenAI news). The only social media spots I pop into now are selected subreddits on Reddit (like r/AppleVisionPro and r/VisionPro), Primfeed (think Twitter/X, but only by and about Second Life), and now Tumblr (for the wonderfully creative Heated Rivalry fan art, memes, and fan-edited music videos using clips from the TV show). Even a couple of Discord servers devoted to Heated Rivalry have popped up, where fans share fanfic recommendations! It lifts my spirit and makes me happy.
For the past four weeks, ever since my SL friend first told me about Heated Rivalry and suggested I watch the show, I have been riding a wave of feel-good hormones like serotonin and oxytocin from the Crave TV series about a hidden love affair between two professional-league hockey players (I wrote about it here). And I am not the only one feeling that heady rush after watching the show! Many commenters in posts on the r/HeatedRivalry subreddit talk about the impact the show has had on them, and many have watched the entire TV series multiple times. The best and most concise summary of this phenomenon (which one joker suggested we call “the Heated Rivalry Mass Psychosis Event” 😂) is that watching the show makes you feel as though you are falling in love. There are many Reddit and Tumble posts from people who, like me, feel that the show has given them an important insight on their lives and how they are living them.
The following Reddit post is one example I saved because I could relate to it so much:
And—just as I had with the movie Brokeback Mountain, almost exactly 20 years ago—After watching the Heated Rivalry television series, I bought and read books 2 and 6 of Nova Scotia author Rachel Reid’s book series Game Changers (the original source material for season 1 and the already-greenlit season 2 of Heated Rivalry), and then dove head-first into the Heated Rivalry/Game Changers-inspired fan fiction posted to Archive of Our Own (AO3 for short). Here’s a link to AO3 of HR/GC fan fiction, sorted in descending order by kudos (fan likes). WARNING: please note that many of these fanfics have an adult content warning for explicit gay sex scenes! One of the ironic things I find about explicit gay fan fiction (also called slash fiction) is that it is primarily written by, and read by, an audience that is predominantly straight women (although, of course, it also has many fans among the LGBTQIA+ community).
Yesterday, my hometown newspaper, the Free Press, devoted a full two-page spread about how Heated Rivalry has become a major pop-culture moment, with ripples spreading out far beyond the queer community and fan fiction writers. I had to laugh when I read a column (original; archived version if you hit a paywall) where three FP reporters were discussing their squeamishness about watching the gay sex scenes in Heated Rivalry. Straight people clutching their pearls over depictions of gay sex in mainstream media are just so funny to me.
I mean, c’mon, people. For God’s sake, if you’ve ever watched Bridgerton, there’s just as much (non-genital but ass-showing) nudity and (non-X-rated) sex happening there, and nobody needs to fetch their smelling salts for that! We do the exact same things in bed that you do, straight people (and no, on second thought, I am NOT gonna spell it out for you here). 😉 Please get OVER yourself.
Okay, end of rant…switching to other topics.
I have two things coming up that I wanted to share with you, my faithful blog readers. First, I have been honoured to be asked to be one of the keynote speakers at the 2026 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference, taking place in the virtual world of Second Life March 19-21, 2026. Of course, I said yes! I haven’t picked a topic or even a presentation title yet, but expect an announcement soon-ish.
Second, although it is not official official (and I really should wait until I get the official letter from university administration, which I was told should happen about the end of March), the University of Manitoba Libraries has approved my application to take a one-year Research and Study Leave (at full salary) to start later this year, where I am relieved of my regular academic librarian duties, and can work on a special project. Academic librarians at the University of Manitoba are members of the faculty union, and just like the the professors, we have the right (and the opportunity) to pursue research. Again, more details later. I’ve only mentioned this to a couple of people so far, but I think I can share that much detail at this time.
So 2026 is going to be a very interesting year for me, on several fronts! Heated Rivalry has inspired me to make some significant choices and changes already (some of which you will hear about, and others you won’t). Wish me luck!
