My friend, Heidi, had a friend who told her about this website/game that you could make money from. So we talked about it until we were curious enough to go check it out. So we're on MSN Messenger as we're signing up, etc...comparing notes & such, trying to walk each other through the process. It was mid-evening on January 22, 2007.
In real life, I was still struggling with the aftermath of the move from FL to LA, the loss of a potentially life-changing friendship, the inability to find a job in a town with a population of 6000, watching my roommate become more & more whacked out on prescription drugs to the point of being a daily zombie &, in turn, I starting hating her. In my online world, I was getting bored with Neopets. I'd been playing there for a year & a half & it was getting old. Plus, Chele had stopped playing cuz she was starting her own RL business. Enter SecondLife stage left!
SecondLife is a 3D virtual world where every single bit of content is user-created. Everything you see, hear, do, go to, buy, find, interact with...is created by another player. If you are really smart & talented & extremely lucky, you can learn to build & create content that you can sell to other players to use. Thus you can make money on SL! You can make your avatar (AV) into pretty much anything you can imagine. Just as in RL, AVs are usually pretty unique with a few appearing similar sometimes. Most of the people I knew were human. A bunch were neko. Myself included. Neko is human with feline characteristics such as ears & tails. Some people added more elements such as cat eyes, whiskers, claws, paws, skins that were spotted or striped. Some people were demons or fae (fairy/sprite) or vampires or lycans (werewolves). some were furries (full animal-big cats, bears, rabbits). Some were tinies (very small full animals-these had to use specially created items because they were so small. Bunnies, teddy bears, squirrels, skunks). I had a friend who was cyborg a lot of the time that I knew her. I had another friend who, it seems, was his mission, to be the most unique thing he could find. He was a dragon, T-Rex, Pegasus, Transformer-at different times. Once you got off into the Netherworlds, you could find aliens, she-males, etc...any sexual fetish preference you could imagine! Hell, you could even be a ghost or skeleton! There were things that claimed to make you invisible but I never tried those to see if they actually worked! ;-) The possibilities were limitless except by your own imagination & pocketbook.
Me, xO & Vixen as nekos:
Tam as a panther:
It's not called SecondLife for no reason. You literally do everything inworld that you'd do in RL. You have a home with decor-whether you rent or buy land-an apartment or a castle or a mansion on the beach! You date, fall in love, get married with extravagant weddings, have sex, have drama in your relationships, get divorced, have pregnancies & then babies, adopt kids, go to school, have a job, run a business, sell your art, sing for live audiences, go to parties, go out to clubs with friends, gamble, play games, go shopping, climb mountains & volcanoes, go sailing, horseback riding, race cars & boats, have vehicles of all kinds, deep sea diving, tour the world (I spent a night going from NY to Egypt to London back to Hollywood, CA once!), And it didn't stop there! As if all of this was not enough, you have sims that cater to specific roleplay genres. Most of these are member-only & you cannot even tour the sim unless you are in appropriate attire. One of the biggest & most well known of these sims was medieval with Kings, Queens, Knights, maidens & so on. They had lots of fae on that sim, too. It was absolutely beautiful there! One of my 1st favorite places was a waterfall that was hidden deep within. The next largest RP contenders were your BDSM sims. Absolutely no holes barred here. Anything could be done on these sims. There were even several Gorean-based sims. A friend & I teleported to one once, not knowing what it was & came extremely close to being captured. When you get captured on Gor, you can't escape until they let you go. Logging out of SL entirely didn't even save you. When you logged back in, you'd be wherever you were when you left. Another big RP was for vampires & lycans. My favorite of these was Transylvania. There were urban sims & mafia sims, too. And probably even more that I didn't know about! Absolutely anything you could want in ANY life, you could find here. I think, in my state of mind at the time, that proved to be a deadly combination for me.Me & Mirtha racing motorcycles on an urban sim:
Polly, Louise & I at a "schoolgirl" event at Dreamgirls:
Me & Cole sitting on the Hollywood sign:
Lorissa & Jeff's wedding:
Martina & Ravena's wedding:
Finn, Becca & I dancing at Organica on Happy Clam Island:
Me as a stripper at Xtreme lol:
One of the many houses:
Me at my waterfall:
It took me a couple of weeks to get addicted. It took me a couple of weeks to actually start meeting people. I'm really very shy with strangers. I've never been one to just walk up to someone & start chatting! SL is no different in that aspect for me! lol However, once I started meeting people, it was all downhill from there! With all that SL had to offer, it would be the relationships that I formed there that would be my addiction.
The 1st place I landed was a place called Club Kanaloa. It was a Grecian-styled mansion surrounded by palm trees & they had a multi-player Slingo game in the yard. The 3 main people that worked there, Jeff & Lorissa (the owners-who were dating & later married) & Tristan (marketing director) all wore togas most of the time. Sometimes Mirtha would show up in a toga (she was a PT hostess & escort). Yes, Kanaloa had ladies for hire! ;-) Sex sells & sex is a massive business in SL! I met Mirtha 1st & then the other 3. Then I started working for them, hosting Slingo. Very quickly, I started running games for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was while I was hosting that I met Neenah & Cal & a whole slew of other people who would end up being good friends. It's also how I gained my 5 stalkers! LMAO After my run at Kanaloa, a group of about 12 of us hung out daily & just did whatever, whenever. We went to events together, we all pretty much were dating someone else in the group. Cal & Neenah had their own club so we hung out there a lot, too. But, you see, the #1 constant in SL is drama. It runs rampant there! And this is what broke up our little group. I won't go into details cuz it wasn't pleasant. It was after all of this drama was dying down & I was contemplating leaving SL that I happened into Girls Talk & met Louise & Polly. You see, up until this point, I still wasn't really submersed into SL yet. I still led somewhat of a RL. RL ceased to exist once I met Lou. I didn't do anything but SL. I mean, literally, nothing else besides SL. I didn't leave my room. I had my own bathroom that was connected to my bedroom. I rarely ate. I slept *maybe* 2 hours a night. I averaged 20 hours a day in SL-solid. I didn't keep up with email. Neopets was forgotten. I'd stopped speaking to my roommate all together. Never spent any time with any of our 4 kitties anymore. I didn't talk on the phone & I didn't spend any time with my RL best friend of the past 30 years or my godson anymore. Nothing existed for me except SL & Lou & my life there. To compound the issue, I never knew what time it was cuz my computer clock & alarm clock were both set to UK time-I was on Lou's time. She lived near London & I was in Northern Louisiana! Yeah. I did this for 3 months & had no intention of stopping it either. RL had to come crashing down on me before I changed anything. I lost Lou over that week & a half that I wasn't online. But the 1st 5 days I was gone, I had simply vanished. She had no clue what had happened to me or where I was or if I was ok. Tam had been with me in SL when the actual RL intrusion happened so she had an idea of what was going on but no details. Anyway, apparently Lou lost control to some degree because she was nuts over not being able to find out if I was ok & that breakdown for her caused issues in her RL, in her marriage & she made a decision. When I finally got back online, within 3 days, she'd left SL, for good. My world was shattered. The family had fallen apart. And I was lost. I hated her for this for months.
Me, Cal & Neenah at Kanaloa:
Polly & I captured in the dungeon by Lou:
Over the next month or so, I had to figure out what SL would be for me now. I had to reinvent myself. Reconnect with old friends & find new ones. That starting over period was a pretty wild ride! I clung to Neenah cuz she was comfortable & familiar. She was my rock, my anchor in all of this stormy sea. Though she was no longer with Cal or the same group of people either. She'd created a clothing store & it sat at this mall on Happy Clam Island where she'd made some new friends-1 of which was an old friend she'd known from before. Soon I began to meet people on this island, too. One of them being 1 of the 5 island owners. She & I hit it off immediately. We've become great friends-in RL, too, now! :-) I hooked back up with Mirtha & she introduced me to her circle of friends. One of which will always be 1 of my biggest temptations! ;-) Soon I had more new people in my life than I knew what to do with! Then it happened. Lynny, my chain sister with Lou...wanted to introduce me to a friend of her's. That's how I met Kat. The rest, as they say, is history. I really don't want to relive all of that by writing about it though.
Anyway, so by the beginning of April, 2008, I had slowly stopped going into SL anymore. Kat had stopped going in. It's been almost a year since I've been in SL on any sort of regular basis. That's absolutely incredible considering how submersed in that world I was. *sighs*
Here's what has happened in the past year since I became adverse to SL. The few friends that I have left that still go in, it's a knee-jerk reaction to roll my eyes or become annoyed with anything they say about SL. There have even been times that I've gotten downright angry about them being in SL instead of hanging out with me. That's so freaking pathetic! :/ But it's because I miss it. I feel like I *can't* get back into SL. I can't go inworld without being inundated with everything Kat & I. The memories are pure torture. She ruined SL for me. She ruined being able to enjoy & crave BDSM inworld & in RL even. She ruined being able to laugh & just be *happy*. She ruined me. Period. But SL is where it started & it's the biggest concentrated location for the memories to live. *sighs*
But here's the thing, in the last month or so, I've been thinking that I want to go back into SL. Breathe new life into my AV. Start over. Reinvent myself. Problem is I don't know if I can go in there without Kat haunting me or me automatically going on the hunt for another Mistress. That huge, gaping, bleeding hole in me needs healing & I don't know how to do it. My emotional state of being right now is not conducive with a healthy SL experience either, I don't think. Being unemployed has me down. Being destroyed emotionally has me really depressed. I'm lonely & hurting & scared. :-( I went inworld last night & Tam was online! OMG! After talking, she's considering possibly coming back inworld regualarly again. Neenah is back inworld. If Tam comes back, too...I'm so there. Between the 2 of them...I will be ensconced, no doubt.
Then there's the question of would I revive the AV everyone knows-the one that is so irrevocably damaged or do I let my stagnant alt (who most everyone knows) have a chance at the limelight? Or do I just completely start over with an all new AV? The possibilities are limitless....
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