On my wanderings tonight, I came across quite the opinionated little vixen at one of the stores I'm frequenting for their lovely Advent fare. In addition to the rest of her groups, she was, notably, in these:
- *Animal Rights Advocates*
- Stop Child Pornography
- AGAINST DOLCETT & -TORTURE RP
- Feminists
- Gender Square
- Second Life Anti-Gorean Council
- SL Left Unity Feminist Network
- Stop Violence Against Women
However, in her picks, she has this statement concerning the "AGAINST DOLCETT & -TORTURE RP" group (and yes, the group name does have that perplexing dash):
This group is for everyone who is beware of the danger of role playing Dolcett, snuff and torture phantasies in SL.I refuse to take you seriously on any of your issues until you learn to spell. Or at least use proper grammar.
So, it's taken me some time for processing, beyond the screen, but I think I've finally figured out part of why I'm just not drawn to Second Life at the moment. I think a lot of it's tied up with abandoning my store.
To be clear, I was never an effective merchant. I had fun designing things, but over the entirety of my business history--under any business name--I've sold less than twenty objects total priced over five Lindens.
I've been in SL more than five years. That's less than five objects a year.
So I was never a success as a business owner, I want to make that clear. Whatever the trick is to running a successful operation, I wasn't doing it, and I never really did make much of an effort to, past the first year. I'm not blaming anyone other than myself for the business failing.
But I'm now reflecting back on other things, and adding them up again. I never broke the bank as an escort, either. While I did do pretty good, overall, as a dancer, the bottom dropped out of dancing (at least my style of dancing) when the casinos left. I failed as a madam; I failed as an event hostess; I failed as a virtual real estate agent; I failed as a land manager.
At this point, I am facing squarely two facts: the Lindens I have, to spend on rent, shopping, and parcel decoration, are solely being funded by other people; and, while I have a strong virtual work ethic, I'm just not drawn to doing anything I've failed at in the past.
And I haven't yet found something I want to take on as a new career.
More to the point, literally the only times I'm entering into Second Life as a whole is for the various Advent calendar presents (and to be ruthless about this, I'm over 75,000 items in inventory now, and adding to that with new items is just making me depressed), or to pay rent.
And I sold off my last Caledon parcel, so I'm only paying rent to Lady Serra. And I'm even reconsidering that...as much as I love Winterfell, and want to support it, is it worth it to continue paying rent if I'm not coming into world for any other reason than buying more virtual time on a virtual medieval (ish) server?
Overall, all of these considerations are also not doing much good for the guttering holiday spirit. Part of that is that we haven't dug out any of the holiday lights, or ornaments; I haven't had the inclination or the finances to make my own ornaments (as I've done most years); and I have zero idea what to get people, either in SL or in RL.
I'm at an impasse. I'm hoping this feeling of being frozen in place will ease at some point, and I'll at least understand what ways forward remain (even if they lead to places where I walk away from Second Life). I mean, at least it would be doing something, not just standing, frozen in indecision and regret.
(Of course, the other part of the problem is currently feeling overwhelmed by the amount of fun ideas I've run across this year. Just a brief sample of the things I've been trying to decide between:
- Making hot air balloon ornaments
- Making vintage ice skate ornaments
- Making needle-felted holiday lights
- Crocheting round teddy ornaments
- Making twig trees from found objects
- Making balloon and string ornaments
- Making waterless snowglobes
So...lots of things to consider in the background. Hopefully, I'll manage to thread this needle--so to speak--and continue on, in some capacity, as a Second Life resident. But it's far from easy...and, as usual, the Lindens aren't helping in the least.
Not that they ever did...
2 Comments:
Best of luck with the feelings, Emi. I can somewhat relate. My store has never been what would probably be considered a success - but it wasen't really intended to make me income as much as a couple more pocket L$ just to maybe buy stuff on sale and what not. Also I don't pay rent so I don't face a constant bill to pay either. Yet I think the worse with SL has not come. Once (I really am hoping they don't do it but they probably will) they disable v1 type UI viewers to access SL then I really think it's gonna be a giant make it or break it for a lot of people. I have to admit Phoenix finally enabling mesh is great, it's gotten me excited about it and I'm using it with the UI I want. Problem with that is the ticking timebomb of when will v1 stuff not be allowed to access SL. Kinda wish that their recent blog post about the new phoenix version wasen't so cold and bitchy - would've probably made me feel better. Overall though SL is just blah, could be the holidays too - hard to say.
Well, and yeah, your store is pretty much funding shopping runs--and I'm not saying that's bad, it's just that I was in a wholly different bracket. The things I make and "sell" for charity ventures have always done well, and I've been glad of that, but again, I can't fund a weekly tier payment solely out of charity sales.
As far as the killing of v1, the main problem is, as you said, time. They have to allow all forms of access from those coders who've followed the open source standards, but it's entirely up to the Lindens when those standards change.
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