Saturday, September 24, 2016

Are You Content in Second Life?


Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Mark Twain 





Are you content in Second Life (SL)?

Interesting question, eh?  (Significant Other says I’d better be.)

Why shouldn’t we be?

Let’s discuss this thought for a while.

What is contentment?


I don’t want to go overboard here.  No Sigmund Freud psychoanalysis, no psych tests, none of the usual means by which we try to dissect this very subjective state. 

What makes us happy?

I want to avoid a technical measure like Maslow’s pyramid of needs.  Like life itself, we have no specific definition but we know it when we see it. 

I think at the end of the day it comes down to do we feel good about ourselves whether in SL or in Real Life (RL)?

Let me take myself as an admittedly biased example.  (I ignore Significant Other’s groans.)

I’m content in SL.  (Significant Other lets out a sigh of relief.)

Why?

I have many friends (OK, not all of whom will admit to this publically.), new journeys of exploration across the Grid await me every time I rezz inworld, I can write, and three people actually admit to reading me on a regular basis!  (Hey, Van Gogh only had one buyer for one painting in his life.) 

But, most of all, RL is in a good place for me right now.  I’m home far more often than I was when I was globetrotting all over the place in RL and Significant Other shows no signs of wanting to throw me out! (Significant Other enthusiastically nods in the affirmative.) 

What about others inworld?

Are they content? If so, what are their reasons? 

I’ve found many residents over the years to be inworld for the technical challenge, the creative opportunities (art, writing, music, and film), relationships both friendship and romantic, or simply a place to go.

Everyone has their own reason or reasons.

SL does change like the seasons in RL.  But, life inworld repeats itself just as it does
in RL.  There is a long established community inworld now and they must be content if they keep coming back.  Even the masochists! 

I’d love to hear from you about whether or not you’re content inworld and your reasons for being so. 

If I get enough responses, I’ll come back with an update!

Please drop me a line!

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!



4 comments:

Gabrielle Casanova said...

I am very content in SL. 9 years in world and i love it more today then when i first started. I can relax here and build my sl the way i want it. forever changing my look, my home all because i can!...

Mangrovejane said...

I don't think I have reached contentment yet. But I have reached happiness. Which I guess is easy to say at 50 something days old. It is all still so big and beautiful and bright and shiny and all kinds of wonderful all over :)

**** said...

I'm not anymore. After six years as a content developer, I'm burned out.

John Simmons said...

I am not content in Second Life, but I am content in Opensimulator on the Digiworldz grid. I can do anything there that I can in SL, but I have a 3X3 megaregion for the price of the smallest parcel in SL. I can hypergrid travel to many other opensimulator grids. I can use NPCs (Non-player characters) as bots or as dance partners. OSSL adds a lot of opportunities above just LSL, but I can use most LSL scripts as well. I can still sell items through the Kitely Marketplace. Many people are moving from SL to the hypergrid due to the freedom from bad SL policies as well as less expense to be able to make and maintain builds. I was very excited about, and active in SL, around 2008. I am even more excited about Opensimulator. SL has thrown a cloud over its future, but Opemsimulator, being opensource has no such locked-in issue.

See more about my sim here:
http://www.piratesatoll.com/