First Life Coming First

January 2, 2015

 

The new year has started well -- organized and productive, just as I envisioned.  The trick will be maintaining this newly established routine.  The routine of which I speak is one that allows me to use Second Life and Inworldz and other virtual worlds as vehicles for doing my first life work, one that gives me the freedom to be inworld as needed and not when not. 

 

In virtual worlds, I am learning to say no rather more quickly than I am inclined to say yes.  That is a lesson I learned ages ago in my first life.  I figured somewhere along about 1987 that it is much easier to say no and then change one's mind than to say yes and have to renig on promises made.    For some reason, that reality was not immediately apparent to me in virtual settings.  Maybe it's because what we do in virtual worlds is ALWAYS optional, so saying yes to requests for my time, talent, and input seemed not quite so real as it does in the solid world.  I think I had the warped idea that, because virtual settings are, well, virtual, so is the time I spend there.  Obviously, I didn't really believe that the clock does not tick when I am inworld doing a reading or building a house or editing someone's poem, but I do think I confused real commitments of time and energy with the ephemeral way in which they are delivered and received.  It's easy to forget that what we do in virtual worlds is, in most ways, just as real as what we do elsewhere. 

 

It is also easy to forget that real life must always come first and that all our other lives are meant to bring something positive to the first.  When something I do in a virtual world starts to feel like it is taking away from my first life, then it must be ceased.  Recently, I had the opportunity to be a central part of a big and wonderful project in a virtual world.  That project excited me and I longed to be a part of it.  I could see ways in which it would enrich my writing and give me more exposure than I have previously had in virtual worlds.  Unfortunately, I could also see where it would eat my time and energy and that, in the end, the exposure I would get from it would not have much to do with my work as a writer.   In the end, I said no. 

 

So far in 2015, I have created a handful of blog entries that will appear in the next week, done the research for a poem about Rhea Silvia (birth mother to Romulus and Remus), created two new illustrations and written a little more of Ermengarde The Expansive and The Year of Long Light. I've also managed to spend time with my partner and my pets and with some friends.  Believe it or not, I've managed to do some crafting and some cleaning  and cooking too.  If 2015 keeps on this roll, it will be a very good year indeed.