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I’m not sure this should be a blog at all, being that all I’m going to say is as I haven’t been hugely active on SL of late, even though I log in every day it’s only mostly briefly, so I haven’t got much to blog about, so here I am telling you in a blog I haven’t got much to blog.

It’s not I don’t want too spend time there, as such, though right now I haven’t really felt that driven too, particularly as my RL is so all-consuming right now. It even makes me think back and wonder how on earth I managed to spend as many hours of every day that I did, and managed to come through all the stress I seemed to put on myself in the process. In fairness to me though, other people were often to blame for that stress, which is, from my point of view at least, not the point of SL or in fact should be for any online game/world/alternate reality.

It should be like in western movies when a gunslinger enters a new town to be told that all guns have to be handed in before he does, and that he’ll get them back when he leaves. Or more simply, when you insist someone takes their shoes off to come into your house. Well, similarly with SL and suchlike, before entering you should leave all your RL hang-ups at the door/login. Although I don’t meet as many people inworld as I used to, even though I still do on and off, I have a feeling that generally this is more the case now, much less grief going on. Either that, or I’m very good at avoiding it. It could be a phase though, SL, like anywhere and anyone goes through them, good and bad.

I wonder if, for a while, SL for me was like a crutch at a time I was going through a rough patch (which is a polite way of putting it, lol). Perhaps not all ‘rough’ as such, just difficult and was looking for ways out, or time away somewhere where I wouldn’t have to deal with the hassles and stress. It didn’t really work. That, I suppose, is the twisted psychology of it, even though there were periods at the time when I convinced myself it was. In fact, what did happen was my life became that little bit more complicated because I’d now added SL. Not just this but I’d also inadvertently ended up taking on responsibilities here when actually my aim was to have none.

I can’t help it though, seems it’s in my nature to take things on. I don’t know why or what compels me, again maybe it’s just my nature and that’s something that very tricky to get your head around, even though a lot of it is going on in your head, or actually most of it.

I did say at the start I had not much or nothing to blog; seems I was wrong, in part at least. There’s not much about SL in this, I admit, but that’s because, like I said, I’ve barely done anything lately inworld, that is, aside from setting up two art exhibitions at two different galleries which actually just involved me hanging my artwork and a little decorating.

So, ho hum, I’m sure you’re bored now, even if you’ve even bothered reading this far. But if you have, well done, you get a gold star and a freshly-baked cookie, plus a nude photo of me! That last one’s a joke, by the way, the cookie might be too because I just checked and I’ve eaten them all.  

 © Anan Eebus

 

the inbetween between

As of today I have been in Second Life (SL) for, would you believe, 11 years and 6 months, a total of 4,202 days. OMG! Surely that is madness. I’ve actually been here since the 8^th February 2008.

Quite honestly it’s too hard to get my head around when I think of the time that’s past and what I’ve done in both SL and RL, my real life, my first life. I sometimes wonder if I’m sane or not, but rather than answer it and drive myself even crazier most probably going around in circles I’ll put it in a small jar in the back of an old cupboard, inside an even older wardrobe in a shadowy corner of a room I rarely go in at the end of a corridor I even more rarely dare to walk down behind the kind of door one meets and think, woah! No way am I going to open that!

As SL time is so different to RL time, something which those who have never used SL would fully understand, it doesn’t at all feel like I’ve been there that long but at the same time I’ve done so much there I’m surprised I’ve fitted all the experiences and changes and ups and downs in the time I have.

Most of my time in SL has been spent as a vampire, which is one of the few consistent things I taken with me throughout this journey, along with my blue hair which strangely I’ve had from the very start, and my shape and size and essential appearance which has changed very little and in some cases like my height not at all.  I’ve obviously updated myself as things got more clever and available inworld, like my skin though that has also, despite tiny changes, stayed the same.  I think I was lucky I finding myself and who I wanted to be inworld very quickly, without weeks of joining in fact. Some people seem to take months and even years going through constant morphing and changing with many giving up sooner than later.

Because of this I’ve enjoyed myself there extracurricularly as myself without having to spend all of my time, apart from like I say occasional tweaks, making who I am. I basically decided I wanted to be as close as possible to me, happy in my own skin, more than I am in RL.

Through my years there I only now see looking back how much has changed, some monumental, some very challenging, some for the better for sure some most definitely for the worse, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the market-economy culture. Although you can quite happily live in SL without spending a penny, and I don’t mean needing a wee, as there are loads of free stuff in everything, skins, body parts (sounds gruesome!), clothes, avatars of all ilk, furniture, trinkets, toys, vehicles, building materials and even roleplaying materials and stuff, you name it it’s there and as much for free as there is at a price. It still remains though that a lot of the best things and some games require money and unless you can pay from an RL account into your SL account you have to think of ways of making money inworld which can be anything between fun to frustrating to near-impossible. Hence, shopping is big inworld and it takes practice, cunning and experience to sometimes tease out the best freebies.

Soon it will be 4,203 days and I will be one day older, not just inworld but here too, as me, the real me, older and probably a bit weirder.

© Anan Eebus