Paranoia

I work at Sweethearts Jazz Lounge Club as an host. And I love that job! I’ve been working with them for over 5 months now, having started when the club was just starting out. Back then things were very different then they are now, there is still the same spirit around, but the place as changed and grown a lot, people have come and gone and its popularity spiked to the top in time.

Yesterday, another shift. Two hours of finger bliss, typing like a mad man greeting every avatar that enters the club, smiling and helping out any question that may arise from any of the guest and hopefully inducing some good mood to those around you. Its a nice job, you get to talk to lots of people, even if it’s not as easy as it used to be when the club was just an embryo of the club it is today, but even so you do get to meet interesting people among the crowds flooding in.

Yesterday it was no exception, the shift went quite smoothly for the first 90min. People were nice, tips were good, IM were kind and interesting and there was time to breath and be a bit more innovative in each greeting then just mass greeting everyone… then the last 30min got really crazy.

Tons of IM going on, lots of people coming in, some avatars pushing the envelop when it come to abiding to the PG rules… and then, after being attacked a few times (the sim) by griefers and knowing that many alts walk among us, one starts to get paranoid at some point just wondering if those strange people talking to you are really someone else you have a gut feeling they are… or maybe it’s just you.

So you keep smiling, keep hosting as friendly as you can, but you can’t help but wonder: “Is it really?…”

I guess being an somewhat experience resident gives you some knowledge how certain things can happen. Not that I am *that* experienced, but I’ve had my share of experiences…

There are people behind every avatar and that’s a strange little thing… very strange indeed. There’s even one behind my own !!

So in the middle of all the relationships going on, good or bad, in the mist of all the words spoken and all the words unspoken, one starts to develop a uncanny affinity to read words where there aren’t any and extrapolate feelings from within hundreds of raw words… its a bit of a paranoia going on your mind to think about it all.

You can just smile and be blissful happy and pretend (or not) that nothing matters…. or you can take it all personally and be truthful in every action and every word you say… and then you have to be aware you are bend on getting hurt sooner or later; thus are the tenets of being true in this imaginary world. But is there any other way to really enjoy it?

My 3rd Reincarnation

My history on SL can be summed up in 3 stages so far. 3 different lifes if you’d like… and not necessarly 3 alts, although that’s my total number of avatars I have.

My initial approach to SL was… well, dissapointing to say the least. Never made it through Orientation Island, which, let’s face it: IT SUCKS!!!! And its major failing point is that it shows SL as a game and a game alone… and… well, SL isn’t very good as an online game if you ask me. So, I gave up nearly as soon as I tried it out, dissapointed at that ‘game’ that so much people talked about … but in was just a big flop and I pushed it aside without a second thought.

Months went by and a friend of mine mentioned to me the wonders of SL, how you could participate in events, have debates on interesting topics, watch amazing things and I was like: “Oh… that’s sounds like fun.” At that point I barelly remembered that I had already tried out SL in the first place and… and it was a nice experience, it only lasted 6 weeks or so. Ended up creating two avatars, using each for different purposes, and it was fun… for a while, then it started to get borring, like if I had experienced it all that I could in this game/chat room thingy. Truth was that my inventory was killing me, too much freebies, no organization, no money, no real friends, just acquaintaces I had some talks on occasion… there was no real flair, no real catchy shiny sparkling feature that hooked me up… so I ended up vanishing in thin air. And the sad reality of that: no one noticed it!

A couple more months went by and RL was enough to keep me entertained and busy without having much time to dwell in virtual worlds… until my RL job ended and I was left alone at home with a sudden rush of free time and nothing to do with it. SO… I did the wrong thing to do and re-installed SecondLife and ressurected one of my avatars: Petros Miklos.

And it all changed.

On the very first day I wonder up trough several venues and ended up at “Sweethearts”, where in a few days I ended up starting to work there as an host. Back then it was still just starting up, so it was still a very cozy and tiny place, very simple, very humble. Made a few friends, got a few lindens on my account and managed to buy my first real items that weren’t lousy freebies.

More important then that I filled my chest with air and tackled my inventory monster and managed to organize my 10.000 freebie items in to some sort of organized inventory from where I could find the stuff I wanted. It may sound silly, but it was a real setback to have so much crap and not able to find anything you wanted… not even knowing if you had anything worthy at all.

Not only that but I made two other important moves. I rented a skybox (a flat in the clouds) and I started to fall in love.

From there on, it was just a matter of time until I realized I was completely hooked to this World (no longer a game, no longer just a chat-room, no longer just a virtual world…)

Now I have a 2nd job, writing for a lovely SL magazine, I keep hosting at least one a week at Sweethearts, where I have made many excellent and true friends, I have my place where I like to rest, now fully furnished and I like the way it looks, ‘cuz it really feels like home. My love was beautiful, but it reached a point of no return sadly. We had to take separate ways, but we remain very close friends. In the end, its just one more piece of my life, to add to the puzzle my life is, a beautiful piece that I nurture its memories, and let the bad moments fade in to oblivion and remember the good moments alone.

And… here I am. A seasoned resident. A working man. An experienced man. I’ve lived and learned a bit… but I still have a long way to go, much to learn, people to know, friendship to attend to and world to conquer (or just visit and add them to my picks 😉

See ya there 😉