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

 

further isolation tales

Isn’t it strange how some in SL just want to mimic exactly what’s happening in RL, which I find a bit baffling as I see SL more like a bit of an escape, of a sorts, or a holiday from it.

I think the oddest thing lately is facemasks. I don’t enjoy wearing them in RL even though in some circumstances in these times of lockdown and Covid and social-distancing I have too, so why would I wear one in SL, especially as virtual worlds are pretty much the only place on the planet, apart from Antarctica, where there is no coronavirus. We should revel in that freedom to move, explore, mingle, ‘touch’, not have to socially-distant and not get locked down there too.

Although there are times in SL when one feels incredibly isolated, exploring lands where there is not a soul, or at best some mannequins or bots, but no actual ‘real’ people. It’s eerie, although it can be fascinating too traversing these shadow lands, dusty corners, forgotten swathes. Apart from ‘abandoned land’ it’s obvious someone somewhere is paying for it and yet there’s no sign of life, activity or anything. This is when it really feels dystopian, even more so than those sims that actually are meant to be and designed specially as a dystopian-theme. It’s these accidental and inadvertent ones that truly have an atmosphere and ambience of some kind of nowhere, end of the world scenario, probably because they weren’t intended to be so. They sit like a shock on the landscape, a moment frozen in the last moment anyone spent there, an intimate anonymity.

I still wish we could travel between sims without having to teleport, to actually, walk, or drive, or fly, or sail. I know this can be done with many on the mainland where they are joined together, but, there are still what feel like huge expanses of nothingness, impassable. What a shame they aren’t connected by the same sea and sky, because if they were then any new sims could appear tectonic-like kind of simulating volcanic activity, as in Iceland, throwing up new land in dramatic ways.

I suppose that’s probably a bit too much to ask of SL, who seem a bit stuck in their ways and still mostly unimaginatively focused on making money rather than making experiences. We may have funky new skins and mesh Christmas pubic hair (it’s absolutely true, the other day I found this for sale!) but the ground on which we stand still seems stuck in its ways.

I am still here though, isolated and not, still me, still looking like me, not yet turned into a dragon or a walking tree, still got blue hair as I have had from my very SL birth, pretty much, give or take a week, and here I still am, gosh, how many years later? Over 12 years! Madness!

 © Anan Eebus