Juiced On Writing

This is the final part of my own newbie adventures into Second Life (unless anyone requests any further). In this, my fifth day as a second lifer, I explore the Writing Centres, my own home island, and learn to dance, and turn my music on. I also blow up my laptop.

Day Five Roundup

A change of dress, and I'm courageous enough to venture out of my house.

Day Five began well. I spent the morning in Second Life trundling around the various writing centres. My first was Story Mountain. As I’d read somewhere how to turn the world into mid-day so that I could finally see (it was 4am in SL time) this made all the difference to my experience.

Story Mountain is an excellent resource for newbie writers. I whizzed through the contacts boards put up in the info centre, picking up notecards and landmarks to all the best other places in SL for writers, and spent a few happy hours going around those, joining their groups, and looking around, although all were deserted. There’s nothing quite as haunting as a deserted bookshop, it seemed.

I found and joined the UK Writer’s Guild on SL also, which was one of the few groups requesting money to join. But as many of the other writing groups hold events SL time, it looked like I couldn’t attend many of them – not unless I was prepared to get up at 3am my mornings (which I wasn’t). There are some held at 1pm SL time which equates to 10pm my time, sometimes do-able depending on my own real life also. But the UK group will hopefully provide a more localised event schedule which I’m keen to participate in.

Feeling happier now, I treated myself to a change in appearance, choosing a flippy spring dress for my attire. Which came with high heels also. I’m not sure why every female has to have high heels in SL – but it does appear the done thing. In real life mine would be around the 8 inch mark, making me a true amazonian. And all footwear for women is set for Size Zeros in SL – meaning that my rather heftier frame is precariously tottering around on teeny tiny feet with awesome killer heels.

When I sit down in my yellow spring dress, the protuberance that is my stomach is much more noticeable to me now. I look like I’m pregnant in fact. Perhaps I do in real life too, for that matter? It’s an interesting perspective to be able to scrutinise yourself in SL with all camera angles.

The Learning Experience site(s) or SIMs in SL are great resources. I found – by tracing through a friend’s likes on her profile, my way to the Writing room for The Learning Experience, and through this finally found two free books which I could “wear” and actually read. They came with re-sizers, unlike my other ones. However you can’t “rez” (make the books appear) into The Learning Experience so I had to teleport back to my rental tiki to have a go at that. I then checked my other books, picked up at Book Island, to confirm that those did not have the same functions of resizing to make them readable.

Then I noticed that some other people were finally on my home SIM, Mango Island. So I picked up my courage (not easy as a reclusive writerly type – even virtually) and tottered my way through my side door and out onto the boardwalk. I thought that was illegal, actually. To walk around outside my house like that. On other properties I’d visited when choosing the one to rent, I’d been unceremoniously evicted from several properties, with a blue sign coming down giving me 15 seconds or I would be.

Fifteen seconds to a newbie could be fifty hours as far as I was concerned. Not only did I not know how I’d walked – or flown – into the place, but on seeing those eviction signs, do you think I had the mental facilities to get out of there in that time?

At Mango Island, I kept away from the other bungalows, but tried out a few miscellaneous towels and pergolas which seemed scattered around. At the end of the beach I happened upon a naked couple doing something I wasn’t willing to inspect on their own set of towels, so went back in for a bit, not wanting to be seen as a perve. Out again, I managed to plant myself onto beach lounger and partake of some cheesy named cocktails (which I believe I stole, because they’re still in my own inventory), and then noticed I was within three metres of a male who was lying in the waters in front of me. So I was caught out perving again, accidentally.

The wonders of a jacuzzi. Just add bubbles.

I tottered up the other way to find that my hidden tiki beach hut was in fact on a resort, and there was a communal meeting area, complete with jacuzzi for me to settle into. With steam and bubbles and all.

I spent twenty minutes in there, and looking back, wonder what on earth I was doing in real life, just watching my avatar wiggle around in the jacuzzi, listening to the bubbles. Is that a waste of time, or a legitimate way to relax yourself from the stresses of our first lives? Because it did relax me immensely, and the whole thing is becoming powerfully addictive. This is a whole life, or could be, where you are able to teleport anywhere you want, visit museums you’ve never gone to in real life, visit ancient civilisations, shop economically and lug around your entire life on your shoulders, er, inventory.

At that point a couple arrived, and I was treated to some more perving into chat between a master and his slave girl. What a new world has been opened to me. Master had to go, and left his slave there. Once he’d quit out, she came over to the jacuzzi, and we soon began chatting and friends. She’s from New Jersey, and he’s from Scotland. As it was around 8pm my time, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that he’d probably quit to go down the pub with his mates for a couple of drinks on the Friday night. Or perhaps dinner was on the table. Although in her role playing, I’m sure she knew also – and probably had her own working life to deal with around their meetings.

For the first time in my life, I've done the splits. A true kodak moment.

Besides, it was nice to chat with somebody, and to find a friend on my island. A friend who eventually got me up and dancing, after I excused my own ignorance and told her I didn’t know how (in real life, too). For the first time in my life, I did the splits (picture taken of that kodak moment). Just as my new friend was leaving, she mentioned she was enjoying the music. What flaming music? I’d never got my rental radio working either. What music?

Twenty minutes later, I’d searched through every toolbar and menu option available several times before hitting a streaming media option. And 1980′s pop blared out so loud, it scared my cat awake – she’d been sleeping beside me on the bed.

A warmth of success passed over me as I started walking back to my tiki hut to try out the radio. Halfway down I realised I was still dancing, particularly when I did the splits into a bird of paradise bush on a neighbour’s property.

After finally finding a channel on my once silent radio, I ventured out again, and walked back up the boardwalk, planning to take another jacuzzi dip before quitting for the night. But up in front of me there were four new avatars. The sight of several strangers at once halted me. I zoomed in with my camera (can they know I’m doing that?) to find it was the master back – he’d lost his slave though, the owner cuddling on a seat with her partner, and another woman tenant. Could I be assertive enough to go up there and introduce myself? Did I have the right?

I turned to go back to my hut, to put away a few things I’d left out before going back to the meeting place. As it was quite late my time by then, I knew I would have to leave from the meeting place rather than my hut later. Besides, inside I would be able to gather my courage again, to venture out to meet some more strangers, wouldn’t I? Yes, that all seemed a most excellent plan on my lovely summers day in Second Life. I took a step…

And then my laptop blew up.

Despite all the exploration, this shot proves I do write in Second Life. Doesn't it?!

I’ve been suffering from power problems for several months now, a combination of a bad battery, incorrect internal connections inside the casing, and a bad power connection on the outside. My laptop doesn’t give any indication that it is drawing on battery power until it goes critical, and closes down. It then won’t power up without a power connection, and once you’ve fiddled with it for hours, and you do get the connection, you have to hold still as a mouse to get it booted up and charging. If it charges.

Last night, it blew up finally. An hour later, and we’d managed to get the battery charging, but it is unusable as any movement or jiggle crashes it back to shut down.

Of course, for a reclusive writer who was standing there on the boardwalk in front of the community she’s living in, having turned her back to them, and then (apparently) simply quitting the program, it’s not looking like I’m a very sociable second lifer at all. In fact, I’m looking damned rude if they thought about it.

My family has now gone out and purchased a top range laptop, with superior graphics card, which gave us no end of hassle in purchasing from some rather I’d-Prefer-Not-to-Make-the-Sale people at our nation’s top retail computer vendor. But it will be a good few days before I’ve installed and setup enough to be able to start off again. I can remain on this older laptop (now on mains power, but I daren’t breath or tap too violently without knocking it onto battery which won’t charge properly) for a certain time.

But I’m wondering if anyone at Mango Island will be talking to me if I do visit my second life again.

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