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 

"lingua abstractica" art exhibition

{This exhibition is now over, thanks for taking an interest}

Welcome to another art exhibition of mine I've been lucky enough to be offered an opportunity to display at the Sisi Biedermann Gallery & Gardens in Second life. 

Through this collection I'm attempting to extract the fundamentals from what is often overlooked in an increasingly distracted and distracting world, to rediscover the tangible through simply being in a space without being bombarded by all the peripheral noise. 

I hope this collection of my paintings can make you think or maybe even take you away for a short time from the craziness of the world and of overthinking and help find a still place inside yourself. Through these images I'm offering one way in which to navigate the madness of pandemics, lockdowns and divisiveness.

 

 

 

minding the gap

     It’s 2021, as if you didn’t know, and what a journey 2020 has been to get here. The time’s been both contracted and protracted, now we’re suddenly four months into this year and I’ve just realised how much has already gone.

     I felt it was time to catch up on my blogging here, and you, lovely readers, that’s if you’re still out there. So much has happened and is still happening to everyone it’s been too easy to get lost or mislaid in the noise of it all. RL (real life) time seems to have collided with SL (Second Life) time.

      For me, SL has always seemed to exist within its own clock, its own chronology, with usually more time passing there than actually had in the real world. Like dog years, a year in SL can feel like seven. Perhaps not as much as that but maybe you get the idea, that sense that you can live that many years in a mere actual 12 months- not only virtual characters and lives but virtual time.

      Second Life is a bubble into which whenever we log in we penetrate like tiny needles each time, not enough to pop it though. Or maybe it’s more like a virus, being absorbed while its integrity remains intact and like a virus we have an impact on events and actions which might result in changes or ripples for good or for bad. Oddly enough we never leave actual footprints for virtual archaeologists to find in the future.

      Well, I’m feeling very philosophical today, but in truth I’ve always been like this, thinking too much, a pocket philosopher (after all, I’m not very tall, in RL or SL). In SL we’re immortal, or think we are. I’ve known inworlders (SL players) who have vanished without a trace and live on only in my memory, not anymore even a profile. As we in RL return to dust, in SL we revert to pixels, maybe to be recycled, reused, becoming ‘preloved’, or even discarded into those vast oceans that exist between sims into which we aren’t allowed access, through which we have to ‘hop’, or teleport. They are the forbidden lands, lands of water, we’re tantalizingly teased but aren’t given the keys to unlock, or touch it, feel it, interact with it in any way.

      It is the nowhere, a final frontier. I think they should open them up, find a way, find the key. The future of SL I believe is there, joining the dots, so to speak. Then we could walk or swim or fly, take a train, drive a car, ride a bike between Sims, perhaps in glass bridges, causeways, following buoys or wandering stars, feel a freedom we’ve not yet been given inworld. I don’t think they’re reading this, those Linden gods, but if they were, that would be my suggestion.

 © Anan Eebus

isolation tales

That’s one really good thing about SL: you can’t get ill, no matter what you do, it’s all bacteria and virus-free, not even the coronavirus can get you here. Of course another kind can, a computer one, but that’s not really a virus, that’s just some coding chicanery which even though can really frustrate you can’t actually make you sick.

You can even fall from a great height here and ta-daa! No cuts, bruises, no broken bones, not even death, and we all know how inconvenient death can be. Well, we don’t actually, we can guess though that it would be mighty annoying. You simply dust yourself off and walk away, or go back up and do it all over again. If only real life was like that. Nor do we have to deal with those really piss-me-off niggles as sneezing or runny noses or wracking coughs or even itches. Mind you, I think itches can be handy, as long as they can be scratched away with some judiciously and well-targeted fingertips.

So, whoever said virtual worlds were a waste of time should try it, it’s quite handy finding somewhere no one or nothing can actually hurt you. That is, as long as you don’t take it too seriously, after all, it is supposed to be escapism, a place to put distance between you and the outside world, being kind of a pixelised extension of your inner world.

What best of all though is in SL you never ever, ever have to use the toilet: ever! While at the same time not worrying about being constipated or having diarrhoea, or exploding! Surely that’s a good thing, especially the not exploding. And, finally, for us girls, no periods. Hurrah! Among other things of course. I know there’s a good side to them as well but really, some days I think nature pulled a fast one on us.

Nevertheless, I still it’s important to keep up ones vitamin C so, even in SL, you’ll sometimes find me filling my face with grapes.

© 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