Taking Stock of My Second Life

Arty and hopefully Artful Shot of Cheyenne and Sweetie

Written 23 July, 2007

Taking Stock of My Second Life

I’ve been in Second Life for almost nine months now (or ten years, SL time, LOL).

Time to take stock.

First and foremost, I am seven months into a wonderful and wonderfully fulfilling relationship with my brilliant and beautiful and fetchingly bubbly Sweetie. She is a joy, and she owns my heart.

We live together in a refurbished Chinese whorehouse that floats 300 meters above the active volcano Pele on the Forsaken sim, out of range of all but the largest boulders Pele might throw, on land which covers some 29,000 square meters and provides 6700 prims upon which we draw to make Pele beautiful and charmingly silly. And the land is indeed beautiful, lushly landscaped with tropical vegetation, studded with striking builds, populated by a variety of terrestrial, airborne, and submarine creatures, and sprinkled with PG-rated poseballs and devices designed to entertain and charm ourselves and our visitors (not the least of which are Pele herself and an extensive layout for Kitto Flora’s wonderful little steam train.

Sweetie and I have a circle of friends and Second Life kin (some mine, some hers, some ours) to whom we turn for entertainment, companionship, and, occasionally, solace.

We are rich, in Second Life terms, with money enough for land, funny toys, and useful gadgets.

We are beautiful, even by Second Life standards, with good skins and shapes and hair and lavish wardrobes stuffed with high-detailed gowns and CFM pumps and a variety of alternate avatars we can pull out when things get slow.

And we have become skilled in any number of areas ranging from fine camera control to building to scripting. We can make (usually in short order) just about anything we can imagine-- and believe me, we imagine a lot! Consequently, Pele is sprinkled with designer houses and custom builds. There are Wells of Death, high-altitude nightclubs, and secret rooms under Pele’s lava. And what we can’t be troubled to do ourselves, we can buy on the wonderful Second Life economy.

We have constructed fulfilling and exciting second lives for ourselves. But most telling is my use of the word we. When I came to Second Life there was only “I.” How thrilling that there is now a we!