Has Second Life Ever Made You Sad?

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. 

Dr. Seuss  

I’ve been blogging lately about feelings and emotions in Second Life (SL.)

(Significant Other is hoping that I’m not giving advice.  What happened to our friends in Real Life (RL) that time had nothing to do with me!)

You might say that I’ve been opening up the hood (or bonnet for my British readers) of our psyches inworld and checking underneath. 

(Significant Other sighs and wonders aloud why can’t I just cover fashions like every other SL blogger.)

But, I’m finding that I can’t do this without touching the emotional third rail of sadness

inworld. 

(Significant Other screams and runs from the room.)

And, that third rail is has SL ever made you sad?

But, what is being sad all about?

In RL, loss of a loved one due to death, the end of a relationship or friendship, or the sudden and traumatic loss of part of our lives due to fire or storm as examples can give rise to sadness. 

Or, being treated unfairly or bullied can make us sad in RL too.

Then, there’s just being lonely and feeling left out.

It happens to all of us sooner or later.

How we manage it and move on from it determines how we live our lives in RL.

But, what about SL?  Can we have these same feelings of sadness arising from inworld events?

I submit that we can.

We can lose SL friends to death in RL.

Good friends can disappear never to return leaving us wondering why and hoping that they’re well.

Relationships and friendships end as frequently as they do in RL.

We can lose everything inworld to crashes, griefing, or identity theft. 

And, of course, SL is no haven from loneliness.

Maybe the only occurrence that can cause sadness in RL that we can’t experience

inworld is illness.  But, I’ve met many inworld whose sadness stems from RL illness. 

SL is not a game.

It’s very real for many of those who reside here. 

SL is an extension of our RL selves.

I always go back to what someone told me when I first rezzed in all those years ago, “Remember that behind every avatar is a real person with real feelings.”

I’ve never forgotten that advice. 

Our bodies may be virtual but our feelings are very real!

We can hurt inworld and experience sadness.

Which is why the rest of us should always be ready to step in to cheer someone up, and maybe, just maybe fall in love sometime!

What about you?

Have you ever been sad because of SL?

If you’d like to share your story, and I’ll guarantee anonymity, then please send it along and I’ll write another story! 

Thanks in advance and I hope everyone is happy out there right now! 

As always, I’m grateful to all inworld for their kindness and time in stopping to talk with a stranger who was passing through their lives. 

My Twitter handle is @webspelunker.  Please feel free to follow me and I’d be happy to follow you.

I can be found on Google+ as webspelunker Ghostraven.

My flickr Photostream is located here.

On Skype I’m webspelunker Ghostraven.

I welcome feedback from readers, please either comment on my blog or e-mail me at webspelunker@gmail.com . 

            If you would like to read about my other adventures in Second Life  please click here.

            Open roads and kind fires!

Back from the Wilderness (Part VI) – I Return to Second Life

Death ends a life, not a relationship.

Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie 

             As many of you have noticed by now, I’ve been away from Second Life (SL) for a while and haven’t been blogging. 

            Once again, Real Life (RL) called me away from SL.  

            The death of someone very close to Significant Other and me, especially for

Significant Other, necessitated our being out-of-state for a while. 

            To add to the confusion, the night before we were to leave, my laptop fried.  (Literally, smoke and everything, most impressive.) 

            Let’s just say that for a whole variety of reasons, it’s taken me a while to get back to some degree of normalcy.  (I’ll ignore the pundits who question whether I had any in the first place.) 

            But, I’m back!

            As before, I’m humbled by the messages I’ve received from my inworld friends.

            From those who knew what happened and offered their prayers, kept us in their thoughts, and offered to help me stay in touch inworld, I’m grateful.  (Significant Other is especially grateful.) 

            To those who only knew that I hadn’t been around for a while and wondered why I had gone over the wall, I appreciate your reaching out to express your concerns and to check in on me. 

            Specifically, I’d like to thank L’il Sis and the members of First UCC who offered assistance, prayers, and their condolences. 

            RL events have made me realize once again how much the SL community is like an extended family in RL than being a mere game or virtual world.  People show their feelings,

concerns, and fears as readily inworld as they do in RL.  Sadly, loss appears to be a universal feeling across both SL and RL.  

            Significant Other and I are both touched and grateful to all of you for responding to our grief as you did!  We thank all of you from the bottom of our hearts! 

            I’m getting back up to speed and hope to reconnect with all of you and to thank you personally! 

As always, I’m grateful to all inworld for their kindness and time in stopping to talk with a stranger who was passing through their lives. 

My Twitter handle is @webspelunker.  Please feel free to follow me and I’d be happy to follow you.

I can be found on Google+ as webspelunker Ghostraven.

My flickr Photostream is located here.

On Skype I’m webspelunker Ghostraven.

I welcome feedback from readers, please either comment on my blog or e-mail me at webspelunker@gmail.com . 

            If you would like to read about my other adventures in Second Life please click here.

            Open roads and kind fires!

Back from the Wilderness (Part VI) – I Return to Second Life

Death ends a life, not a relationship.

Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie 

             As many of you have noticed by now, I’ve been away from Second Life (SL) for a while and haven’t been blogging. 

            Once again, Real Life (RL) called me away from SL.  

            The death of someone very close to Significant Other and me, especially for

Significant Other, necessitated our being out-of-state for a while. 

            To add to the confusion, the night before we were to leave, my laptop fried.  (Literally, smoke and everything, most impressive.) 

            Let’s just say that for a whole variety of reasons, it’s taken me a while to get back to some degree of normalcy.  (I’ll ignore the pundits who question whether I had any in the first place.) 

            But, I’m back!

            As before, I’m humbled by the messages I’ve received from my inworld friends.

            From those who knew what happened and offered their prayers, kept us in their thoughts, and offered to help me stay in touch inworld, I’m grateful.  (Significant Other is especially grateful.) 

            To those who only knew that I hadn’t been around for a while and wondered why I had gone over the wall, I appreciate your reaching out to express your concerns and to check in on me. 

            Specifically, I’d like to thank L’il Sis and the members of First UCC who offered assistance, prayers, and their condolences. 

            RL events have made me realize once again how much the SL community is like an extended family in RL than being a mere game or virtual world.  People show their feelings,

concerns, and fears as readily inworld as they do in RL.  Sadly, loss appears to be a universal feeling across both SL and RL.  

            Significant Other and I are both touched and grateful to all of you for responding to our grief as you did!  We thank all of you from the bottom of our hearts! 

            I’m getting back up to speed and hope to reconnect with all of you and to thank you personally! 

As always, I’m grateful to all inworld for their kindness and time in stopping to talk with a stranger who was passing through their lives. 

My Twitter handle is @webspelunker.  Please feel free to follow me and I’d be happy to follow you.

I can be found on Google+ as webspelunker Ghostraven.

My flickr Photostream is located here.

On Skype I’m webspelunker Ghostraven.

I welcome feedback from readers, please either comment on my blog or e-mail me at webspelunker@gmail.com . 

            If you would like to read about my other adventures in Second Life please click here.

            Open roads and kind fires!

Taking Stock in Second Life

 

When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.

Anonymous

                                                                

 

          The recent events in my Real Life (RL) have caused me to pause for a moment and think.  (Normally, this is where Significant Other’s eyes roll or an excuse is found to beat a hasty retreat somewhere, anywhere.  Today, because Significant Other has been a major part of what’s been happening, not to mention a source of strength and comfort for me, I see support and affirmation.)

          I thought about my loss.

          I thought about all who have helped me in both RL and Second Life (SL).  (All of you who reached out via various media when I missed a blog post and stopped tweeting for a while, you’ll never know how much that meant to me.)         

          Previously, I’ve blogged about how quiet SL was.  How there seemed to be less going on. 

          But, but after writing that, I began to notice that while maybe at the galactic level, SL wasn’t as bombastic as it once was that at the personal level (i.e., avatar to avatar) there was always a lot going on. 

          Whenever, I logged on friends were around.  They reached out.

          If they weren’t around then they left messages.

          Sometimes, friends just disappeared with no warning.  Their loss is felt and I can only hope that RL offered them new challenges and opportunities and they’ve just moved on with their lives.

         

Combined with the outpouring of prayers, condolences, and well wishes that I’ve recently received made me realize just how noisy in the very best sense of the word that SL really is.

          All the other things that have been happening around and about SL are really pretty irrelevant. 

          Should we care about SL 2.0? 

          Does Ebbe Altberg really matter in the grand scheme of things? 

          Is it important if RL media is suddenly surprised that SL still exists at all?            For me the answer is a resounding “No!”

          SL is a very complicated place and it’s complicated because it’s about people.

          SL happens at a very personal and intimate (That’s not what I mean!) level.  Individuals communicating with one another and with their communities.

          People share thoughts, feelings, and fears inworld. 

          Yes, there is the veil of anonymity for many of us but that doesn’t make it any less personal.

          Are our SL friends any less real to us than our RL ones?

          Once again, the answer is a resounding “No!”

          After all these years of being inworld and blogging about it, I’m just now realizing that the community there is SL is more than just scripts, prims, and sims. 

          It’s all about the wonderful people who make it up and log in every so often to make it the wonderful place that it is!

As always, I’m grateful to all inworld for their kindness and time in stopping to talk with a stranger who was passing through their lives.         

My Twitter handle is @webspelunker.  Please feel free to follow me and I’d be happy to follow you.

I can be found on Google+ as webspelunker Ghostraven.

My flickr Photostream is located here.

On Skype I’m webspelunker Ghostraven.

I welcome feedback from readers, please either comment on my blog or e-mail me at webspelunker@gmail.com . 

          If you would like to read about my other adventures in Second Life please click here.

          Open roads and kind fires!

Back from the Wilderness! (Part V) – I Return to Second Life

 

Overheard at a gravesite: "And they all said ’I’m sorry for your loss,’ as if you were someone who could ever be taken from me."

Robert Brault

                                                                

 

          I’ve been way from Second Life (SL) for a while.

          There are reasons.  Yes, reasons and not excuses.

          First, Significant Other and I went away for a few days (Yes, this was in Real Life (RL) and not some cybertrip, I have some standards.) and the usual available WiFi wasn’t available.

          OK, things happen and as I’ve posted before in the Back from the Wilderness stories I invariably bounce back and somehow manage to post a story.

Then, as Significant Other and I were preparing to return home, I received word that a very close loved one had passed away unexpectedly.

As I guess as many of you know, a time like this can be a stressful and confusing one in a family. Hence, I left SL and the Metaverse for some time.

I did reach out to several friends at various times to let them know why I wasn’t inworld.

I received messages from other friends wondering why I wasn’t about or posting.

From all I received their prayers, thoughts, and condolences.

I’m slowly coming back now.  Beginning with my blog and following with social media.

Significant Other and I thank all for their prayers, thoughts, and condolences.

I’d also like to thank everyone for their patience as I put RL and SL back together again.  And, to those who kept reading my stories and retweeting my tweets!

I’ve blogged about loss before but when it comes at us in RL it’s hard to accept but I know that I must and go on.

Those in SL were as supportive and sympathetic as my RL family and friends.  I guess this shows that we’re not really all that different regardless of the mediums we use.

I look forward to reconnecting with all my friends in both worlds over the next several weeks.

Thanks again!

As always, I’m grateful to all inworld for their kindness and time in stopping to talk with a stranger who was passing through their lives.         

My Twitter handle is @webspelunker.  Please feel free to follow me and I’d be happy to follow you.

I can be found on Google+ as webspelunker Ghostraven.

My flickr Photostream is located here.

On Skype I’m webspelunker Ghostraven.

I welcome feedback from readers, please either comment on my blog or e-mail me at webspelunker@gmail.com . 

          If you would like to read about my other adventures in Second Life please click here.

          Open roads and kind fires!

A Long, Lost Friend Returns to Second Life

Shook hands with the Devil, looked him in the eye, looked like a long lost friend.

Van Halen

         My original plans for this week’s story were different than what you’re reading right now.  What I would have written I don’t know because as I was sitting and thinking about this story (Daydreaming is Significant Other’s term.)  I had an interruption.  Maybe “interruption” is a poor choice of words because what happened was that an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in many months suddenly popped up on my online friends list. 

          I quickly IM’d her and we caught up and while doing so I started thinking about how friends come and go in Second Life (SL).  We often see them coming but we rarely see them go until it’s too late and suddenly we realize they haven’t been around for a while.

          That’s what happened here and that’s what I’m writing about this week, long, lost friends inworld. 

          Let’s first talk about why my friend and why she left.  (I won’t identify my friend because I didn’t tell her I was writing this story and also don’t want to be responsible for driving her back out of SL because of curious onlookers driving by gawking at her second life.  I do have some professional ethics. I also don’t want my friends to stop talking to me.) 

          My friend and I met at a mutual friend’s wedding several years ago and afterwards we would hang out inworld when we were in at the same time.  She had an interest in SL photography and her personal portraits are of a very high quality.  She tried her hand raising breedables (meeroos) and had a small business with them for a while.  Bilingual and active in her Real Life’s (RL’s) nation’s inworld community, she had an active social life.  Once upon a time, she had a boyfriend (Not me, she also has standards.)  When I was a noobie, she helped me because that’s what friends do inworld.

          Why did she leave?

          Well, her RL became more active, in a good way.  But, inworld, many of her old friends had just disappeared and she had begun to be bored by SL.  She simply stayed away. 

          (Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating folks abandoning RL for SL.  But, a happy balance isn’t a bad thing.) 

          As her friend, what did this me for me?  I was left with unanswered questions about where a friend had gone.  Admittedly, it took me a while to realize this but I did get there eventually.  (Significant Other nods knowingly as I write this.)  My inworld friend had gone walkabout and I felt a gap or loss. 

          But, what can we do about this inworld when our friends go MIA?  It’s not like we can go down the block and knock on their door, drop by the local pub where they hang out, or call them on their cell as we would in RL. 

          We wonder, maybe worry, about what’s happened to them.  Have they died?  Gotten a magnificent new relationship in RL?  Heaven forbid, wandered off into World of Warcraft?  Maybe developed an online gambling habit?  The mind does wonder.  (I freely admit to an overly developed sense of the dramatic.) 

          What does this mean to the SL community?

          I’ve blogged about friendship and loss inworld before but having one of my own friends involved adds a more personal dimension. 

          People just disappearing for no reason can be disruptive to a community’s social fabric. (Look what happened in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge.)   We become inured to the lack of closure with friendships and relationships.  (I can’t speak for the rest of the RL world but in my country filing a missing person’s report with the police when a friend falls off the radar suddenly and unexpectedly is considered the socially acceptable thing to do at the very minimum and helps with letting go much in the same way as a traditional Irish wake does in the US.)  Uncertainty haunts us more so than in our real lives. 

          But, for now, my friend has returned to SL.  She thinks she’s going to stay for a while.  This is good for everyone.  The community is whole again, or, at least in one corner.  Can SL still offer the challenges and excitement that it once did? 

          Now, will she stay and if so, for how long? 

As always, I’m grateful to all inworld for their kindness and time in stopping to talk with a stranger who was passing through their lives. 

I welcome feedback from readers, please either comment on my blog or e-mail me at webspelunker@gmail.com . 

          If you would like to read about my other adventures in Second Life please click here.