Oddly enough, it turns out that Vint and I share the same rezday.  I didn’t really realize it until I saw her posting.  Sort of a twilight zone sort of thing…  Anyway, it has been an interesting year full of ups and downs.  From a Second Life perspective, I have meet a lot of people I really love and respect.  People I would have never meet and interacted with otherwise.  I always think now if today was my last day in Second Life I would remember these experiences forever.

On the Second Life relationship front, I seem to have found myself in a strange limbo, of not knowing who or what I want anymore.  Thinking I know what I want but I’m not sure I can have it.  Every time I get tied down in a SL relationship I feel constrained, yet when I’m not I feel alone.  It seems to be a catch-22.

I’ve also noticed over the last year my evolution in clothing tastes.  When I started out, I made an attempt to try and control spending.  I knew that might be a problem.  Obviously, that was a failure.  :)  I started out dressing fairly cute and stylish, but nothing outrageous.  Then I moved on to more gowns, dresses and evening wear.  All very “normal” sort of outfits.  Then I think the turning point was a chance visit last January to Dark Eden.  This was the turning point to more exotic clothing.  While I continued to buy “normal” clothing, the more interesting articles started to become more the norm to buy and wear and normal clothing became worn less and less.

When I started in Second Life, it took quite a bit of time, money and effort to get the look that I have.  The body, skin, hair, and clothes all took a lot of coordination and effort.  Now it seems to be a lot easier, at least from what I see.  I have a thing about being individualistic.  Yes, I did dye my hair wild colors when I was in high school just to be rebellious and different.  The last thing I want to be is a Barbie clone.  While looking attractive and seductive is a lot of fun, and to be honest it is part of the whole environment, being a clone is not.

By around March or April it seemed to me more and more Barbie perfect clones were running around, complete with notecard recipes on how to get a perfect avatar.  That’s about when I stopped being as much of a fashionista and more of a costume fanatic.  After all, if I can look like anything I can start to appear really interesting.  This also started the game of how exotic can I look.  You’ve seen pictures of me as the demoness.  This sort of becomes a minor obsession.  It can become quite challenging to get all of those bits attached to an avatar and working together.  I think at one point I was using every attachment point on the avatar - everyone.

I also found I was pretty much in love with my shape.  I think most of use who have been in SL for a long time are very attached to their shape.  It is their core of their being in Second Life.  It’s what you see pretty much all of the time.  Sort of narcissistic, but I suppose it is some form of self love or perhaps an reinforcement of self in an abstract world.  In Real Life you don’t see your self the same way all the time.

One of the bigger events in Second Life was a Dark Eden party.  It’s where I met Etain Peregrine and Charissa Korvin.  Charissa got me going into City of Lost Angels role playing game in Second Life.  Not by asking me to join, but by my own curiosity.  Joining CoLA turned out to be a really good thing for me.  It gave me a sense of belonging to a group and a common goals.  Something I am really having fun with.  I also like being able to dress up, role play - oh and being evil is fun too…  we have cookies.  I also like to try running around and shooting people now and then too, when the need arises.

Regrets, I regret not taking enough snapshots of places and people.  Something I need to work on.  I regret that Second Life changes so fast and thing disappear so quickly.  I regret not being able to give attention to all the people I should.  I love and hate IM’s.  They are like leeches.  I wish the Second Life world was smaller so you could walk up and talk to the person you are IM’ing, instead of talking across the world.  But then you have privacy.  It too is a catch-22.  It’s like a multi-line telephone.

Second Life has also been rough on Real Life.  At times it’s been a real vampire on my Real Life.  I think we’ve all been there where we have allowed SL to take too much out of Real Life.  It’s an equation, SL + RL = c.  If you give to SL, you must take from RL.  Usually that means loss of sleep.  Sometimes I regret spending too much meaningless time in world, othertimes I wish I had been there when I wasn’t.  I don’t regret my Second Life experiences, I just wish I had more time for both Real Life and Second Life - maybe I need a Third Life. 

I’m looking forward to another year.  Another year of fun and play.  I’m sure it will be interesting.

-Veyron