Random Thoughts

Second Life is my favorite time waste/entertainment/whatever. I really enjoy the creativity that I see whether it be on fashion blogs, flickr pics, or builds in-world. Being the computer illiterate that I am, I find the technology really amazing. Also, I participate in a support group in-world which gives me the opportunity to connect with other people in a way that I just don't have time for during the hectic work week in my first life. Second Life is a great addition to my first life. Having said that, I want to emphasize that I said ADDITION TO, as in doesn't replace, my first life.

So, I have a question. What would you do if tomorrow -- suddenly and without warning -- Second Life ceased to exist? How would you handle it?

For the last year, I have weaned myself off of Second Life because I found that it was affecting my first life too much. Sure, it gave me a chance to converse and make friends with people all over the world who I'd never meet otherwise. But, I started asking myself questions like: Exactly how are these people friends? What's the difference between the stranger standing in front of me in line at the grocery and one of my Second Life friends? The honest answer is NOTHING.

In fact, that stranger and Bob Resident could be the same person and I would never know it! Second Life lulls us into a false sense of security. Its anonymity makes the intensity of instant intimacy feel so much more real than it genuinely is. True friendships need months or even years of nurturing in order for intimacy and connection to be possible.

I have realized that I cannot let myself get so involved in socializing in Second Life that I miss the opportunity to connect with actual flesh & blood humans. Have I made real friends in Second Life? Absolutely. They are the rarity, and I am grateful for their friendship.

All that I am saying is that it's best to keep Second Life in perspective. Take the time to think about how much your involvement with it affects the quality of your first life. Because when you log-out of the viewer, you can't take the prims with you.

Do We Make “True” Friends in SL?

I have been in SL for three years and five months as four consecutive avatars. For one reason or another, I have deleted accounts and started over. I am sure that I am not the only one who’s done that, and whether or not doing so constitutes lying is a topic for another post. I have met all kinds of people during my time here: mentally unstable people, troublemakers, artists, builders, creators, writers, lovers, partners, and friends.

I have been shoulder to cry on, listener, and giver-of-advice for RL and SL relationship problems. I have hung around in seedy sims with my pals to kill time. I have contributed to running SL businesses and to photography projects. I have spent hours upon hours interacting with other people in SL.

I have done all of these things with people I have a rapport with and who’ve surpassed the acquaintance level of friendship, but I am not really sure if I can call these people “friends” in the true sense of the word.

When I interact with people in SL, the real me listens. The real me gives advice. The real me gives her time and effort to others. I do realize that I shouldn’t do these things with the expectation of getting something in return – I should do it in order to help. But, I am tired of having “friends” who expect me to listen to every last detail of their drama and to empathize with their situations who cannot extend the same courtesy to me. I try not to discuss relationship problems with my friends in SL. With the exception of ONE friend – when I do ask for advice – the same people who expect me to listen diligently to their problems have no time to listen to mine.

This has happened so frequently to me that I must ask, “Are these people my ‘true’ friends?”

I Take Back Everything Negative that I Said about You, Blogger!

My posts were recovered. They are out of order now, but I will take that over unfinished sentences.

To Delete Or Not to Delete a Post?

I had a discussion about blogging yesterday with my friend Opti. We talked about how I had gotten the wrong overall impression of his blog... a theme that he'd not intended. He also mentioned that sometimes, he's deleted an entire post that he'd spent valuable time and effort writing before actually publishing it for the world to read.

Writing can be very cathartic!

I admitted that I've gone back to old posts and modified them but never completely deleted them. Because I wanted my blog to be a written chronology of my personal emotional journey in SL, I went back and took out people's cartoon names and other specifics so that I could focus more on illustrating the hows and whys - not the whos and wheres.

Believe me, there's one post in particular that I want to delete so much! The one about polyamory that shares the same graphic as this post. I don't think it's fair to the process to just simply delete that which we wish we hadn't written. I'm supposed to look back at older posts and think, "OMFG WTF was I thinking back then?!?!?!?" That is what growth is all about - realizing that we've changed - we're different, that we've made mistakes, and that we've learned from them.

Through writing that post about polyamory, I was hoping to convince myself that it was something that I could actually do since someone who I cared for very much at the time was expecting me to learn to like and practice it. But, here's what I learned:

Polyamorous relationships are NOT for me. I don't have anything against the people who practice them and are able to make them work. Afterall, I have read The Ethical Slut and I understand the concept. But in my opinion, poly is a lot like communism -- it looks damn good on paper and in theory but doesn't work so well in practice. This may sound harsh, but I don't think that anyone who expects a poly lifestyle from his or her partner is capable of genuinely loving anyone other than him or herself.

One Hundred Ninety-Two Days

I have not written anything, read, or even thought about this blog in one hundred ninety-two days, or just over six months. In the beginning, I was so excited to start a blog and was so willing to work through the challenge of writing fresh, humorous, insightful, daily posts. After reading a new acquaintance's blog, I thought long and hard about why I'd let my own blog disappear and I came up with two main reasons:

Who really gives a shit about what I have to say, anyway? With the advent of social media like Facebook and Twitter, I have slowly watched my RL friends, colleagues, and family turn into self-absorbed gossip hounds. People obsessively wait for that next update or for their ex-boyfriends from high school to post pics of their new families, or they post meaningless information about how much they've had to drink or how they've just gotten a new manicure. I don't find any of this to be valuable information, and it seems like our culture is becoming entirely "me" centered -- a shift that I don't think is a step in the right direction. I cancelled my RL Facebook account and I stopped posting to this blog since I am not an authority on anything and I don't want to waste other people's time with self-important posts.

The anonymity of SL brings out the worst in people. My SL New Year's Resolution was to become nicer and more friendly to the people who I meet in SL. Since January, I have interacted with lots of different people who behave deplorably. They lie, use people for sex, or are trolls - insulting and bullying people. I fully realize that SL is NOT RL and can be a wonderful playground for people to explore fantasies, personas, and situations that are not possible in RL. But, this does not mean that it's acceptable to check humane treatment of others at the log-in screen, then retrieve it when we re-enter the real world - aka the place where we're accountable for our actions. I have no doubt that the people who behave deplorably in SL are actually decent people in RL which is why their behavior in SL is all the more baffling to me. If I were to continue to write about my adventures in SL, this blog would turn into a permanent rant or bitch session and I am not going to let myself fall down that rabbit hole of negativity or become a hypocrite because of my New Year's Resolution.

Having posted this, the question is: Will I post again? For now, I am just not sure. Perhaps.

Jealousy Is a Red Flag - Not a Green Eyed Monster

During my travels around the grid, I have been noticing a lot of mentions of “jealousy” in people’s profiles (seems like “I don’t do jealousy” is the new “I don’t do drama”), and what I read prompted me to really think about jealousy – so much so that I am actually going to defend a person’s having jealous feelings.

What kind of psycho-bitch defends jealousy?!?!?!?!?!? *gasp*

According to the profile comments that I read, jealousy is a devastatingly destructive, baseless emotion that has no place in a virtual environment like SL what-so-ever. I simply can’t think of an emotion as natural as jealousy in those terms. In my opinion, jealousy is a red flag – not a green eyed monster.

Let me pause for a moment to stress that I am not condoning omg-I-have-not-talked-to-you-for-five-seconds-so-you-must-be-fucking-someone-else-and-now-I-must-boil-bunnies-on-your-stove jealousy. Even in my most irrational, freak-out moments, I have never gone that far off of the deep end.

In my three years in SL, I have had two relationships where my controlling jealous feelings was a huge challenge for me. I still stand by what I said during those relationships: If I didn’t genuinely care for those men, then I wouldn’t have acted jealously. But! In retrospect, I can see that I was reacting not to the influence of outside forces (aka other women) but to problems within the relationships themselves.

Only through examining why I was experiencing extreme feelings of jealousy did I realize that I was not getting my needs met in a way that made me feel safe and comfortable. In this way, jealousy served its purpose, and I was able to leave those relationships since I realized that they weren’t healthy for me.

If you’re one of those people who will not tolerate even a teeny-tiny little bit of jealousy from your partner – I have to ask. Why? Is it because you plan to behave in a way that is going to illicit feelings of jealousy from your significant other and you don’t feel like dealing with the consequences? If jealousy itself a red flag, so is a person’s making comments about being intolerant of a partner’s feeling jealous.

After all, isn’t better to work through feelings of jealousy than it is to go through a relationship feeling inconsequential and unimportant with a non-jealous partner who doesn’t care one-way-or-another what you do?

Eff You, Blogger!

So... Blogger decided to take a big crap the other night and save the wrong version of one of my most recent posts during some kind of emergency "maintenance" event. When I remember what I had originally written, I will edit the post. Until then, you're left with whatever the fuck it saved.