Milestones…

Feb 12, 2015 | Images, Monday Memes

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. 😀

Otium

Jan 15, 2014 | Chatter, Images, Sightseeing

Today was one of those days where everything felt extra stressful. Just dealing with life made me want to run away and hide under a bed for a few hours… or at least to run away and dive into a carton of ice cream, or a pile of Cheetos. Anything with a lot of calories would have been good.

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Introspection

Nov 19, 2013 | Chatter, Images, Monday Memes

I’ve actually been doing a lot of self-reflection lately. Part of it comes from a strong need to write my way through this month and vent every feeling I’ve had  so far as I try to come to grips with losing a spouse. Part of it is a tendency to ask myself these sorts of questions from time to time anyway.

One of the things I’ve thought about is the relationship between myself and my avatars. I’ve only logged Ravensong into SL once since my husband passed, and it was extremely difficult for me to be in world. I hadn’t realized just how closely we had associated ourselves with our avatars, we always joked that they were us as we’d like to be, but I think the identification was much deeper.  Raven is Melony, Natureszen was Jeff, there was never a division where we’d see them as characters and ourselves as the typists controlling them. SL was our shared experience, it was ours in much the same way a favorite restaurant was ours, the park we went to most was ours, and even watching certain TV shows or listening to a particular band was our thing. I’m finding that with all of these activities, even if it is something I’ve enjoyed on my own from time to time, I am having a hard time imagining it will be possible to enjoy it without him. I am so closely tied to Raven that logging her in to explore is almost the same in my mind as considering going to a favorite RL place by myself. It just feels wrong, and lonely. (more…)

Searching for myself

Oct 14, 2013 | Chatter, Monday Memes

eyes

Monday, meme day, and another two-parter, with questions! I love question memes. Questions are the best! I can go on for hours. You’re all thrilled, I can tell. 😀 I’ll just skip the introductory commentary and get right to it. (more…)

More Autumn Sharing

Oct 4, 2013 | Chatter, Images

Yay for more Autumn sims! I’ve seen a number of people mention Small town Green lately so I scooted over and roamed about for quite some time. The fall colors are lovely and the pumpkins are impressive. (more…)