Yes, we got together and for a brief interlude, we chatted

However seriously other people may take their blogging, I cannot conceive how my own words would have anything new to say to anyone. I go about my SL exploring and meeting new people, but for the most part, a great deal of my time in SL is spent alone working. I suppose it is a bad habit which I should be able to shake off for SL, at least, but I cannot. However, from being in SL for over a year now, I have come to understand that to fully immerse myself in this environment, I should have a paid account to spare me the trouble of working to make ends meet. But I don't have said account. I am one on the last holdouts from the group of people I started off with on October of 2008. Obviously, not everyone followed my lead (or lack of it).

Last night I had the opportunity to sit down with two fellow colleagues, two academics in training equally hooked on SL as I am, perhaps more. One of them is Zola Zsun, the other Cepheus Ceriano. As we sat to contemplate the darkness of a pixelated sky outside a new art gallery that Ceph is putting together, we began to discuss our lives mediated through a monitor by way of SL. So, what was the purpose of entering this VE? What did we gain from it? What have we contributed. Oddly enough, the magnate there has to be Cepheus. A year after entering the grid, he owns a small empire of pixels that has brought him great joy, if not easy money. Doing business is hard here as it is everywhere else. Zola had a brief interlude as a shop keeper, and I remember her little pueblo store fondly, for the architecture and all the shops in the vicinity were so well realized, that one felt like giddy simply looking about. I, on the other hand, cultivated and destroyed avatars. Being of sound mind but a sometimes irrational need to explore the mind of others, I set out to explore myself via many different characters. I currently hold four, I believe, but oddly enough, they all are me. My little social experiment lacked focus and methodology. All I managed was to create a multitude of 'me' without any particular razón de ser. It was fun as a novella of sorts, but I did little in the way of becoming a creator or an established doer or builder of something as my colleagues did. The main difference being that I had no paid account, hence no capital to commence. I am not surprised whatsoever that my experiment did not pay off dividends. But it does exemplify the cyclical pattern of poverty within a SL that closely resembles those found in RL. The poorer you are, the more you have to rely on others. The more you do, the more control you give up. The more control you must yield, the less engaged you become. This could explain why both Ceph and Zola spent a considerably longer lengths of time in SL than I did over the last year. Ajjjj....nasty little cycles that creep up on you.

So? How does one gain control? Or money for that matter. I did work as a university builder, but I was only paid in RL, and never got to see a Linden of it in SL. However nonsensical this may seem, being without an account prevented me from bringing money into SL. Being destitute in SL led to all sorts of problems with my building skills. If I had no place to leave my stuff overnight, it was simply too tedious to pick up and start all over again the next day. I gave up on building just as I was about to hone my skills. I am hopeful in the bicycle-riding theory which states that if you learned to ride a bike once, with a little practice you will be able to pick up a bike, know how it functions, and how you fit into the context of person-on-a-bike as if you had not allowed time to lapse. Well, I am keeping my fingers crossed, particularly as I have now taken up photography and intend to create my own poses and other particulars involved in picture taking.

:)