I’ve SecondLifed…

This weeks Monday Meme from Strawberry Singh asks Have you ever SecondLifed?

Well, maybe a little.

  1. Have you ever owned a sim in Second Life? – No, but It’s still a dream.
  2. Have you ever created content in Second Life? –wwglen Oh yes. Tons of stuff. I make little things all the time. I make decorations for my house, or things for my avatar. Once upon a time, in my early days, I even had a shop, with various pagan themed home decor. My inventory all looks so dated and basic now, so very 2007, but I love all my scultpy creations and still pull them out to decorate my house.  Sometimes I miss that little store. ♥
  3. Have you ever driven a vehicle in Second Life? – Yes, I have tried several times and I am still terrible at it. I’m a hazard to myself and anyone around me.
  4. Have you ever gone sky diving in Second Life? – I don’t suppose inadvertently walking off my platform counts, does it? I haven’t skydived out of a plane, but we used to go parachuting off the Eiffel Tower.  After our first visit my husband would wear his parachute all the time, and was constantly looking for tall places to jump from. 😀
  5. Have you ever played a sport in Second Life? – No.
  6. Have you ever gone clubbing in Second Life? – Not often, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a club.
  7. Have you ever fangirled/fanboyed someone in Second Life? – Once in a while at events or stores I’ll recognize a blogger’s name and think it’s neat to spot them out in the wild. I’ve never felt fangirly over anybody in SL though.
  8. Have you ever taken a picture of your avatar in water in Second Life? A few times, but when I went looking for a pic I realized it wasn’t as often as I’d thought.
  9. Have you ever taken a picture of a sunset in Second Life? – Lots and lots. I even have a few pre-windlight ones, but I really started having fun after windlight. This is a few years old, but I still like it.
  10. Have you ever taken a nude picture of your avatar in Second Life? –  Maayyybeee… and my guy alt can look pretty cute sometimes so… lol. Really, though, I tend to keep my avvies dressed all the time.
  11. Have you ever dated in Second Life? – No. I joined with my husband, so it was never something that crossed my mind. Now I can’t even imagine dating in SL, I think it would feel really weird.
  12. Have you ever had or attended a wedding in Second Life? – I’ve attended quite a few weddings. At least one of the couples is still partnered.
  13. Have you ever drank, smoked or taken drugs in Second Life? – I have attached the occasional champagne at the aforementioned weddings. My avvies don’t smoke though. I quit IRL a good dozen years ago and I refuse to let my avvies pick up the habit. And how do you even take drugs in SL? o.O
  14. Have you ever engaged in sexual activity in Second Life? – The hub and I occasionally hopped on pose furniture for giggles, but pixel sex with emotes and everything? Nah. I imagine that’s much more meaningful if you’re in a long distance relationship.
  15. Have you ever been to Bukkake Bliss in Second Life? – Haha, no. I see it mentioned a lot in blogs but I’ve never been there.

Thank you Berry, for the questions! 😀

Milestones…

So I said to myself, “Self, we need to think of something to blog for this weeks Berry meme…”

I’m just ridiculously happy that Strawberry Singh has started up her Monday Memes again. I know I won’t always think of something on topic so I can take part, and I’m often quite late, but I just love going through the comments and checking out everyone’s responses. This week she talks about her blogging milestones. Her instructions:

Share when you started Second Life, when you started blogging about Second Life and talk about any Second Life blogging milestones you wish to share with your readers.

I’m not sure I have any typical blogger milestones. I’m very casual about blogging. I love to write, I do it all the time (mostly on my own where it won’t be seen) and I love my blog, but I don’t post often enough to build up an audience. I don’t mind this, I continue this because it makes me happy, and even if it was a private journal I’d still make posts, just because it’s fun.

I began SL on Feb. 5, 2007, I just passed my 8th rezday last week. 😀 The blogging came much later though. Originally the only thing I had was a Flickr account to post my pictures, and for a few years that was enough. Sometime in 2010 I decided I really really wanted to blog and started on Blogger, mostly with RL stuff and iphoneography, but occasionally an SL related post crept in. After a year or so I lost interest in that and moved on to Tumblr, where I eventually made the same-named predecessor of this blog (I imported most of the original posts to this blog when I started it.) The first post was in February 2012 and was a stand of trees where I’d been experimenting with shadow settings.

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I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with the blog, and for a few months I posted very infrequently. There was a small SL community getting started on Tumblr, but I was having trouble finding people to follow. Since my SL blog was a side blog I could only follow from my main account so I’m sure it puzzled SL bloggers who wondered why someone who seemed to have no connection to SL was following them. I enjoyed Tumblr a lot and am still active there, but I began to want a slightly more full featured blog platform because I thought it might give me more incentive to post long things, and I always wanted to play with WordPress, so here I am. Yay!

My milestones are just my little memorable blogging moments. I think my first was deciding to start doing Strawberry Singh’s memes, because it gave me a topic to work on each week, when I was having trouble thinking of something to say.  The second was taking part in Vanessa Blaylock’s 30 Days of Avatar Blogging challenge. That not only got me in the habit of thinking about what I could post, it also got me exploring SL more, and it introduced me to a lot of wonderful blogs that I try to keep up with when I can.

My favorite post was in response to a Berry meme, about my best friend, where I wrote about my RL husband/SL partner. I talked about how much fun we had exploring SL, and how much I loved his love of our virtual world. Less than a month after I posted that I lost him to a heart attack. Reading that post is bittersweet now, it reminds me that I’ll never be able to explore the world with my soul mate, but I will always have the most wonderful memories.

These days I’m trying to get myself back into the swing of blogging. I’ll be trying to find time to get in world and think of something to post and trying to figure out what use I will make of my studio at Medici University, while still adjusting to a new job IRL. Might be tricky, I have no idea how dedicated I’ll be. Still, I have lots of things I want to do. I want to post more and go in world more often (I’m averaging about once a week at the moment.) I’ve contemplated breathing some new life into the Tumblr version of this blog and trying to keep up with posting to the Facebook page I created.

I’m not sure how far I’ll get with all my plans, but I’ll try, and if nothing else I’ll continue to entertain myself. If anyone else enjoys this as well it’s always a lovely bonus! Who knows, maybe I’ll even reach a new milestone this year. 😀

Selfies at MU

Taking important photos for blog.

This was a weekend of birthdays. Thursday was my main avatar’s 8th rezday, Friday would have been my late husband’s birthday. My rezday was quiet, I logged in, bought myself a couple of presents, and puttered around a bit. The birthday was a bit harder, and will probably always be a challenge, but I keep trying to move forward and be the confident person my husband always believed I was becoming. He is still my muse, silently encouraging me to push beyond my comfort zone, to do more things, follow my dreams, be more outgoing. Sometimes I listen, sometimes I still withdraw into a shell.

I think the Slelfie turned out well!

I’m trying to push beyond my comfort zone this month by taking part in Medici University at LEA23. I was on the fence about trying any new projects, but an IM from Vanessa Blaylock prompted me to go for it. I had such fun with her Avatar Blogger challenge a little over a year ago that I thought this would be fun as well, and so I set up my little studio space and decided to list myself under creative writing. I’m not sure if that’s the best classification for me right now, while I used to write stories all the time, and hope to do so again, for the past year I’ve mostly just done therapeutic writing to help myself get through the days. I’m still not sure I’m in the right headspace for creative writing, but for me writing in any form is good. Perhaps just being part of this will urge me to sit down and do it more often.

MU looking very colorful, with my gazebo in the lower right.

I still must explore the MU campus and meet some of my neighbors.  While being around creative people might be good to get me back into a regular writing mood, just being around people might be as helpful. In my offline life I tend to be a bit introverted and shy, but I have no trouble being chatty and making small talk. Online, and in SL in particular, my social anxiety goes off the charts. I’ve never been sure why that is, but any time I have an opportunity to try to work on that I try to take it. Hey, being at a university is all about learning new things, right?

A room with a view.

Besides, how great is this little space? I’ve always wanted a little gazebo studio to write in. The entire sim is full of wonderful spaces, and from my front door I can look out over LEA22 and the colorful build that appeared recently. I’ll have to learn more about that too. 😀

Learn more at  Medici University or visit the campus at LEA23