hoardwear

 I confess, in SL I am a bit of a hoarder. I’m not as bad as I used to be but, well, I do have an inventory filled with between 35,000 and 40,000 objects. 

They are all assorted things, ranging from clothing of all types, jewelry, furniture, HUDs (even kept some from games that no longer exist or even work in SL), AOs, skins, shapes, hair (lots of hair), tools, builds and buildings of various kinds, yoga mats, ornaments, artworks, plus more fringe things such as weapons, magic spells, plushies, pets (I have a couple of horses, a ghost leopard, some fish and probably others I’ve forgotten about). I also have a folder dedicated to my business, so to speak, hobby really, ‘unVeiled’, for which I also made an SL group for which is free to join. All of my exhibition collection are there, neatly packed away until needed. I still get them out when I have a chance for an exhibition, when I’m offered space to do so.

Of the many assortment of things I have kept loads of prim-based stuff, as in loads of clothing from when all we had was made of prims. It must be the retro-girl in me, and my just in case thinking. I mean, you never know when, for whatever reason, I may need to default to primwear. It’s not likely but to be honest I can’t bring myself to get rid of them, having had them for so long. Some of these things, especially clothing, I’d worked hard at getting and some I wore a lot as they’d become at the time my favourite go-to modes of dressing. 

Occasionally, I do have blitzes, as in clear-outs. Some are more successful that others. The simplest approach would be to simply pick a folder of older stuff and just send it to trash, then delete them from the trash: a no going back policy. But even when I do find the energy to wade through these thousands of now pretty much redundant items I still find myself thinking, keep or throw, keep or throw? Basically, dithering. 

I suppose I find letting go not an easy thing to do, so does that make me a hoarder? Maybe a bit, but I’ve usually got a good reason for keeping whatever it is. At least, that’s what I tell myself. 

I should just bite the bullet and show my inventory no mercy, shouldn’t I? (I’ll just have a cup of tea first and think about it, maybe a biscuit too. I have plenty of those in my inventory).

© Anan Eebus

backwards forwards

 

I am back! Although I’ve not been away, not as such, just haven’t got around to posting anything here for ever-so-so-so-so long, and that’s a long time.

Nor have I been away from Second Life either, logging in almost daily, but you know how RL can be: all-consuming. SL used to be all-consuming, years ago, when I let it become so which turned out to be such a bad idea. A bad idea because eventually it started leaking into my real life, into my daily waking thoughts, into my dreams, feeding me worry after worry. 

Basically, I took too much on, which, with hindsight, was a truly crazy and totally defeated the whole reason for joining SL in the first place, as a relief from the stresses and strains of the real world, a place where I could just hang out, chill, mooch, and do whatever else took my fancy, especially things I probably wouldn’t dare too for real. I will leave that to your imagination as to what those are.

But that’s all done and dusted and water under the bridge and all that. I managed over time to free myself of those responsibilities which had become no better than shackles. Every now and then since some people have tried to drag me back there but luckily I’ve learned my lesson, once bitten, twice, or even thrice, shy.

Nowadays I spend lots of time exploring, I even recently did a photo project called “Window Shopping”, which basically was photos of me by different window displays, which I wrote about in a earlier blog a while back. It was actually quite tricky because even though there are some good one, such things aren’t that common in SL. Many shops have no outsides, or they are just anonymous buildings with all the creative effort going on inside and with little except for the name on the outside. Nevertheless, I did manage to find a few and sometime I might revisit the project, see if I can find new and even better ones.
Currently my exploration interests are of a kind I haven’t done for years and tend towards things of an ‘adult’ nature. 

In my early days here, and by the way, I have been in SL over 17 years (phew!), I’d been tempted to such places but over time got a bit bored of them. Now, things have changed a bit, more than a bit actually. The interactivity has become more imaginative, and sophisticated, if that’s not too over-the-top word for them, and the people I meet generally more interesting. Well, regarding the latter , mostly interesting, some are still kinda vacuous and lacking. 

But I’ve been meeting some really fascinating people and enjoyed their company in lots of interesting and unexpected ways. I have long found it hard to resist my deeper nature, or maybe my darker nature, and SL gives me a chance to express that part of me. So, why not go for it! All in the name of pleasure and more pleasure, and more pleasure, and more…….

© Anan Eebus 

 

 

Happy Christmas from me and Santa baby

 

Family ties

 

I’m a vampire.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who regularly reads my blog or knows me inworld, even though I been very lax in not having posted anything since, oh my god, November last year! So, this will be my first blog of 2024, and it’s already June!

I’m a vampire, I’ve said that already, but, spoiler-alert, I’m only one in Second Life (SL) and not for real. Although I might be, I wouldn’t admit it though because people tend to get weird and run away if you do, or start whittling stakes. I’ve been one since soon after joining SL in February 2008. I hadn’t planned it when I entered this world, didn’t even know about it, but after a mere few months suddenly I was, almost by accident, I’d been embraced into Bloodlines.

Bloodlines, or BL for short, for those who don’t know, is an SL inworld roleplaying game that has thousands and thousands of players. Players, among other things, are defined as ‘active’, or not. I’ll explain this the best I can soon. Most players are a member of a ‘Family’, the umbrella term for clans, hordes, covens, guilds, etc. Of those who don’t have an allegiance to any family are regarded as ‘clanless’, the Bloodline’s term for it being in ‘Curse’. This can be by choice or circumstance.

I’ve worked out that there are currently 5,692 Families in the game, all pretty much being a mix of races, such as vampire, lycan, angel, demon, or a hybrid of any of these, i.e. a vampire/lycan is called a ‘vaewolf’. One other race is humans, and as with all other players are either in a ‘family’ or not. Families lead by humans are known as guilds.

5,692 is a lot, the largest family in sheer numbers to date have 78,522 members, while the smallest ones have only one. These are ranked according to the number of members who are defined as ‘active’. On saying earlier that I’d explain this, truth is I’m not entirely clear on what defines ‘active’ in Bloodlines terms, it may be those not ‘destroyed’, as in bloodless (or empty of your particular race’s vital life-source, of which we lose a little each day unless you regularly feed on others, or, you’re protected with a special amulet), or it might be how recent you’ve logged in to SL, or something else entirely. Perhaps someone can tell me.

I am the head, or leader, of my own family, or clan, called Veiled Fang. I founded it years ago after having spent a couple of years in other clans learning the ropes, finding my feet, or, my fangs, so to speak, then suddenly found I had my own clan. Out of curiosity, I did a few pointless sums on my BL family’s statistics to work out what percentage of our members are actually defined in BL-terms as ‘active’. So, out of our total 394 members, only 49 are shown as ‘active’. This is only 12.44%.

This sounds low but it’s not bad at all in comparison to many other clans. Some, especially those with huge numbers in the thousands, can have as few as anything between 1.5% and 9% active. I think though that this metric can’t be used as a reliable measure, because of those families with, say, only one or two or three members, many show all one, two or three members to be active, which is 100%, that’s hardly a fair comparison when working out how active a clan is or isn’t, or at leats its members.

Another interesting sum I did was that out of the total 5,692 Bloodlines families to date, a whopping 1,880 have only one member, that’s 32.92 % of the total number of families. If you include those families having only two, three or four members, that’s 3,831 families, equating to 67.30%. Phew!

This is what a few empty moments in the day can do to me, make my brain want to play with pointless things. Still, it gave me something to write about, even though it may not be of any interest to you at all, and may even have made your brain hurt.

© Anan Eebus

 

Oops Halloween

 

I’m sorry to say I missed posting here for Halloween and missed pretty much every SL Halloween thing. Although, it’s ok, I did have a rock on time in RL which kept me preoccupied, dressing up for a couple of Halloween parties and events, even a Halloween dog show, which was completely bizarre.

The competitions at the Show were, unsurprisingly all for dogs and some of the categories included 'Lovely Vampires', being the prettiest female dog, 'Dapper Druid', the most handsome dog, 'Fangtastic Fancy Dress', 'Jed-eyes', the most appealing dog that a judge would describe as a ‘take home’ dog, the 'Gruesome Twosome' where both dog and owner are judged, 'Hubble-Bubble (I get into trouble dog)' which is obviously the naughtiest dog, 'Trick or Treat' for the best, you guessed it, trick, 'Waviest Wand' for the best waggle tail and 'Perfect Pumpkins' for puppies up to 12 months old. Yes, it was weird and hysterically funny.

I don’t have a dog but my friend does so I went with her, and we both went with her dog who was obviously dead keen on going.

So, I feel I owe you, and my SL blog, to include a suitably Halloweeny picture which I’ve included here, ta-daa!

I know this isn’t a very SL-content-rich blog this time so hopefully my next one will be, that is when I find time to have enough time in SL. But rest assured, I will, for sure, in the build up to Christmas which now that Halloween is over I could say starts . . . . . . now! Ho-ho-ho.

~Anan~~~

full to bursting

From the simple days of 2009...

 

What are we like! Inventories, we all have them, like nipples, except with those we are limited to just two, and even though we’re limited to a single inventory, there seems no limit on contents.

SL inventory’s are prone to going awry, as in, becoming full to bursting, like mine is right now. Luckily nipples don’t go awry, or at least mine haven’t yet anyway.

My inventory has just over 35,000 items in it, which to me is a HUGE number, and a HUGE number of stuff, and as I call my inventory my wardrobe, some days I’m terrified of opening it lest I get buried in an avalanche of stuff Mostly clothing, probably unsurprising, clothing of one kind of anything, mesh clothing of course, as is the thing these days, but I’ve also kept quite a few prim bits and bobs and outfits, even though I never wear them now.

I can’t seem to bring myself to abandon them, as it seems the only way to remove them is to basically bin them. Which is a shame and wasteful. In RL I’d be taking them to a clothing bank or charity shop, but here, everything pretty much has been made non-transferable so even if I wanted to give them away, I couldn’t. This I think is a huge mistake people have made over the years. Why shouldn’t we be able to pass them on? I understand perhaps not reselling them, perhaps, but simply passing them on to someone who might want them seems a more user-friendly way of dealing with unwanted clothes and other stuff.

And I do have plenty of other stuff too, as I used to do a lot of building I have loads of building materials, and furniture too, some of which admittedly I’ve never used, some used only once, some often but probably won’t use again. But, I never know, maybe I might.

Prim, sculpt and mesh, all making a trawl through my inventory quite a challenge. Fortunately I have over the years had the foresight to at least to some degree order things into folders and sub-folders, and even in some cases rename items, though this hasn’t been the case with everything. Some stuff is simply listed alphabetically, a list growing ever-longer, stretching into an infinite nowhere.

Perhaps 35,000 isn’t so huge to some people but to me I am constantly frustrated at myself for my inability to part with stuff I’ve spent years accumulating. But I have too, cos it is driving me bonkers. I want to rationalize, downsize, though not my height as I’m already quite small, in RL and SL. Not of the SL version of what they call ‘Petites’, as in tiny avatars more the size of fairies in the bottom of your garden kind of size, just small as in human and avatar terms.

I keep having clear-outs, spring cleans, even when it isn’t spring, but then I find I’ve acquired yet more stuff, mostly I should say, freebies, or winning stuff, lucky chairs, or incredibly cheap being that I’ve not much in the way of lindens, and rely on meagre sales of my artwork, which is most definitely meagre.

I’m due another wardrobe blitz and will get around to it, eventually, perhaps this will prompt me to do so. Or maybe it might not.

 .... to the full to bursting days of 2023

© Anan Eebus 

 

 

Me here now

It has been so long since that first day I found myself here, in Second Life, unsure of myself, not even knowing why I was here at all.

It was a radio program I heard way back on 2008 where SL was mentioned in glowing terms as being “the next big thing” in virtual reality since when it was launched back in June 2003, about five and half years before I discovered its delights. Not sure if I did so out of curiosity or maybe even boredom, although I hardly ever, if ever, get bored, but I was going through a rocky period in my life so if I’m honest, that was probably an impetus, an escape from the real sometimes seemed a good idea at the time.

Apparently, by 2013, SL had over one million users of which I was one, and still am, and now this year, in fact this month on the 23^rd it’ll have reached its 20^th anniversary. Nowadays its user-numbers bobble around 800,000 to 900,000, so they say, though how many of those are active, as in log in at least once a month of not more frequently, is hard to say. I know for a fact there are numerous dead accounts, avatars that still exist ‘on paper’, so to speak, or inworld, but are no longer accessed by their real world selves; effectively abandoned. People move on and don’t bother or remember to actually delete their inworld avis (avatars), simply walk away or even lost their password and rather than faff about trying to find it again they make a new avatar, while some people seem to drop in once a year maybe for whatever reason.

Whatever, many I think, we can become quite attached to our avatars, our inworld selves. The longer we’re inworld with our inworld persona the harder it can be to just erase it from existence. The thought of doing so might elicit feelings of grief, the idea of maybe losing a part of yourself, this you that is you while at the same time isn’t. It’s a weird psychology and potentially a huge personal dilemma.

Now, I know of some who make avatars and throw them away regularly, never get attached, move on, and seem to have no problem with that approach. Personally, I’d find that impossible. Is it healthy to become so attached to something that’s on the face of it little more than pixels, ones and zeroes? I don’t know.

I was SL born on the 8^th February, 2008 which makes me, as I’m writing this blog, 15 years and 4 months of age, a total of 5603 days since I first ever logged into this alternative world created, founded, invented, whatever, by Philip Rosedale. It feels kind of like time in a bottle. Even though for now I seem to do less inworld I’m in no rush to leave, it’s still a part of me.

I remember how I felt when another virtual world, Inworldz, actually closed down completely, and quite suddenly, so much so most of us had little or no time to properly finalise our affairs there or even say goodbye to our inworld selves, many actually lost real money. As with SL I’d invested quite a lot of myself, not so much financially but emotionally, and as such felt, in a way, grief-stricken. I know some people might think it potty to be like this, but it’s no different from anything you put a lot of yourself into to have taken away.

These places can get under your skin, you have to be careful sometimes to get the balance right, which as I’ve said in previous blogs I’d got wrong numerous times, but I think finally I’ve found a kind of equilibrium, for now anyway.

Then again, I seem to keep changing my mind on this, some days I want to get more involved again, others am happy to keep connected but also a distance. Either way, RL rules! For all it being stressful and not being able to fly unaided, like you can in SL.

© Anan Eebus