(Most of this post was originally written around the 4th of June, 2008.)
A few years ago I opened a shoe box my parents sent me when they were cleaning out stuff they had stored in their house. My paperdolls! Oh, gosh! I had thought they were long lost, gone forever. All hand drawn and carefully colored and meticulously cut out; yes, by the hand of an eleven-year-old, but she was not bad. Not bad at all.
I remember sorting through them and lining them up in themed rows as if in some vast paper boutique. Hundreds and hundreds of garments, sometimes in many color variations. Accessories! Costumes! Even theatrical backdrops. (For photo shoots? Was I decades ahead of my time?)
When I came to Second Life I was in paperdoll heaven once again. And, as I said, I went a bit crazy once I got my feet under me in world. Is it wearing off yet? I keep thinking that I may be toning down a bit, but there is not a lot of evidence of it. I still spend an inordinate amount of time shopping (searching and looking, as distinct from “buying.”) However, I’m no longer flying off after EVERY freebie I read or hear about (I always explore the whole store and, often, the neighborhood before I leave) or buying the fatpack of every item I fall in love with. Perhaps I’ve become a little more selective. Perhaps the creation side of it has ramped up enough to be a bigger draw and a more interesting way to spend my time.
It cannot be disputed that social activity in the Uru community in SL continues to expand, and that certainly takes up a lot of my time these days. We have parties, readings, parties, field trips, meetings, parties, fan girl rock concert outings, parties … When I first came to Second Life it was possible to attend every Uru function. That is no longer the case. And with RL looking to get more intense over the next few months, I’m afraid I’m going to have to miss even more community events than I do now if I am to get anything done on the projects I’m working on in world.
So, relatively sated for now on The Clothes and resolving to cut back a bit on my social life, I’m turning my attention to working on my own clothing construction education, not to mention my poor neglected house and still-to-be landscaped islet. And I’m stepping back to reflect on my adventure so far. Especially about The Clothes! Because talking about them is almost as much fun as discovering them, scooping them up, and wearing them. (Making them is not fun yet. That will come.)
Update: Very little time these days to work on skill building in SL, mostly due to RL commitments. And when I do get in world, I find I just want to ramble, explore, hang out with people in the community and, well, play. Like last night, when I allowed myself to be lured from badly overdue inventory sorting to dance in the new Arabian Nights sim. I’ve built a decently functional and private studio in a skybox, and I’ve been concentrating lately on my photography skills, partly in the effort to make my gosh-awful huge inventory more accessible and partly to practice for the day when I’ll be photographing my own designs.
But wait, there’s MORE! (to quote a wag from the Uru forum)
One thing is certain. With Uru coming back (hooray!), my time will be even more divided. They’re calling it Myst Online Restoration Experiment (or MORE) and no one knows when it will be coming online. We do know that the plan is to incorporate player-created content in some fashion. (That fashion will not resemble SL at all; we do know that.) Some people have said they are not going back. I respect that. It’s their choice.
I’m going, and I suspect I will spend most of my online time there, at least for a while. But I’m going to keep my islet home. And I shall not cease from exploration…
