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

Inworldz.. dust to dust

          Another world bites the dust it.
          It seems after so long a time now another virtual world has collapsed in on itself as Inworldz falls down the virtual rabbit hole of pixels under the weight of a single click of ‘DELETE’. 
          Inworldz (IW) was made ages ago in some ways in sort of response to Second Life (SL) in part aimed at those disillusioned with SL as many had become at the time. Some left the inworld world entirely while others migrated to other worlds such as IW while others, and this was me partly, joined and lived for a time anyway happily in both.  That is until I realised how much time was needed to keep up not just inworld account but in two entirely separate worlds and somehow balance this with my real one, what I call the realme-world. 
          Despite this for a while I did seem to manage it, still spending more time in SL but also like a bit of an antidote to SL’s drama which has gotten bad at the time for me I managed hours in the day for IW.  So I established a me there too with the same name, Anan Eebus.  I even imported my body settings and looked almost identical.  Why wouldn’t I, as for me it was the only other-me I knew and in SL I did sort of model my inworld me on my RL (real life) me. I called it and still do, being comfortable in my own skin, especially as in these worlds you can basically choose any skin you like.  Weird I know.  I do hope you’re not getting lost in all these me’s I keep weaving into the blog here, just remember they are all me at the end of the day. 
          So I set up a whole other virtual life in IW for years in my avi, or avatar there, establishing regular places I’d go, like for dancing or for coffee and chat with fellow inworlders, or inmates, as sometimes it did all feel a bit insane and like an asylum, as did SL.  In truth there was very little difference between them except SL was a bit ahead of it in technology and because it was the thrill of the new, had far less psychodrama. I even set up mu unveiled Art Gallery and started having exhibitions and took part in build contests through which I did win some money, or I’z, or IW money, the equivalent of linden currency in SL. 
          But after many years IW has finally died, this month in fact, closed forever and all in it lost beneath the virtual sea that reclaimed it to its icy depths.  I wish I’d known sooner as because I had been logging in less in recent years I wasn’t there for the last few weeks or day so wasn’t able to save anything.  That is if there was even anyway I could have, but I would certainly have taken a few last photos of the old place before its imminent demise. 
          Anyway, luckily I do still have some photos but anything else I had there is gone forever, so fragile and ephemeral are such worlds, places, lives, gone in a click! It had over the years suffered a huge decline in active participants and I suppose cost or apathy or whatever got the better of it.  I somehow wish I could have made a little 3D model of myself though as a souvenir, which sounds weird I know, but you have to be a little weird to live in these worlds. 
          But I’m still here, in SL that is, happy enough and certainly as busy as I need to be but luckily not letting rule my life as I once did.

the last photo I took of me in IW

 © Anan Eebus (27th August 2018)