Long time gone
I knew it had been a long time since I was last in SL or posted here, but really…it was Thanksgiving? My RL has taken a turn that has kept me from logging in. I logged in for the first time last night and crashed immediately. What a warm welcome that was! Actually, I believe it was more of my internet connection and less of an SL issue. I logged in again, and I could barely teleport or rez scenery around me. I felt like I didn’t know anyone on my Friends List, and I logged out.
I first came to SL in 2006, and I still long for that new experience feeling when I log in, but it never seems to happen, and I quickly get bored. I honestly don’t feel like I know what to do in SL anymore. It’s probably best that the ‘addiction’ subsided, because I have so much going on in my RL now that I don’t have the time to dedicate to it anymore, yet I still long for it sometimes. I still read many of the SL-related blogs and pretend make believe in my head that “I get it” still.
My boyfriend used to be an avid World of Warcraft player until a couple of years ago, and he had actually given SL a chance back then, too. Usually people who come from WoW don’t take to SL easily because the movement controls are so different. Sometimes I think if I could get him to play, then maybe I’d find things to do with him, but so far he’s not interested.
So if you’re still reading this blog, then I do hope to come back to SL someday, but I’m just looking for the motivation.
Happy Thanksgiving
So I cheated. The sign REALLY didn’t say Happy Thanksgiving, but thanks to my limited Photoshop skills, it does now!
I decided to dress for the occasion…or at least in seasonal colors. Now that Turkey Day is ALMOST over, all the warm colors will be put away, and we’ll drag out the red and green. I’m enjoying it for now….I even took off my J’s Cross Belt Pumps! *gasps*
Skin: Tuli – Emily [light] ~ petal (freckled)
Eyes: Sin Skins – Intense Sage/Gold
Hair: ETD – Jessica – Espresso
Top: Celestial Studios – Trixie Tee Shirt – Melon
Pants: Celestial Studios – Cords – Tan
Belt: Celestial Studios – Brown Suede
Shoes: Maitreya – Group Gift Pumps – Brown
Jewelry: Genesis Classic Cocktail Ring, KessKreations – Natasha Heart Charm Necklace
About Me
WordPress kept hounding me to complete my About page. I did that, then I couldn’t find it on my blog page. I thought maybe it was a widget, but I couldn’t find it there, so I added it as a link. You’d think that if they wanted me to complete it so bad that they would have an easy way for others to access it.
You’d also think that I was technlogy-challenged by reading this message.
Anyway, read all About Me!
Loneliness Abound
I read a lot of SL Blogs, but the one blog I look forward to each week is the Sunday Shopping Cart Disco’s SL Secrets post. I’ve been a fan of PostSecret for quite awhile now, so it was natural for me to enjoy reading the SL version.
Each week’s secrets are filled with lots of snarkiness that I usually don’t have a clue who they’re intended to insult, but I still find it interesting to see what people will say when they are able to remain anonymous. The old saying, “Mama always said that if you ain’t got anything nice to say, then don’t say it at all,” doesn’t seem to apply when there is no worry of repercussions and judgement.
Another common theme seems to be loneliness. I wonder if there are just that many lonely people in SL or if once again the anonymity of SL Secrets seem to attract people who might be searching for validation that they truly aren’t alone. Or perhaps it’s a safe way to lurk into the lives of other people without actually making a connection with someone and risk ridicule of any kind.
I’m sure there are other reasons, but these are the two that I have identified…and well, I might as well admit that I identify with them myself. I haven’t posted anything snarky to SL Secrets, but I can definitely see the appeal of doing so. I’ve been known to write letters to people who have ticked me off or hurt my feelings, but I never send them, so in a way I’m guilty, too. As for the second part, I most certainly identify with what I wrote. I can’t seem to find my niche in SL, so I end up by myself most of the time. I think about making friends, but I honestly don’t feel like I know how! To say it sounds silly, but it really does make sense in my own head.
At least SL Secrets has succeeded in making feel not so alone anymore.
And just for pure self pleasure (that sounds REALLY bad), here’s a picture I took tonight. It has nothing to do with this post, but I felt like adding it 
RL vs. SL Me
So here I am! I took the challenge to make my AV look like the RL me, and voila! I tweaked the shape as close as I could get with my limited shape-making skills. I had the hardest time finding an olive-colored top to match the little bit of my top that is showing in the picture, so I found a Fluky striped Hoodie and just photoshopped the beige stripe out.
Skin: Tuli – Emily [light] ~ petal (freckled)
Eyes: Sin Skins – Intense Sage/Gold
Hair: ETD – Hayden – Espresso
Top: Fluky Striped Hoodie (brown)
Jewelry: Violet Voltaire – Eternity Necklace – Silver/Ruby
This is pretty close to the type of clothes that I would wear in RL…except the heels. I NEVER wear heels in RL, but I love to wear them in SL, especially since I discovered J’s Real Toe shoes!
Skin: Tuli – Emily [light] ~ petal (freckled)
Eyes: Sin Skins – Intense Sage/Gold
Hair: ETD – Trinitee – Espresso
Top: Tuli – *sUmi* patch shirt red
Pants: Tuli – *sUmi* jeans dark
Belt: Tuli – *sUmi* folklore belt red
Shoes: J’s Real Toe Cross Belt Pumps(RED)
Jewelry: Violet Voltaire – Eternity Necklace – Silver/Ruby
Is this thing on?
I haven’t posted here in forever. My time in SL has been very sporadic for the past few months. I’ve had a lot of changes in my RL, and SL hasn’t been the same for me.
I’ve changed my AV just recently. I had been thinking about it for awhile, and I finally just did it. I’m trying to make my AV look more like me instead of hiding behind a Size 0. When I first started SL, I thought how cool it would be to finally look like I’ve always dreamed. I thought it was my chance to be thin and beautiful. I didn’t have a bad experience with that, but I guess with all the RL changes I’ve had going on, I felt that I wanted to be more me.
Marissa Racecourse’s study on fatvatars was very inspiring, and I did start creating a more plump shape, but I never wore it out in public. Then just recently I read several blogs of people changing their AVs to look more like themselves, and that was the final push. I did it! I don’t know how successful I’ve been in making Ashlen look like me, but at least she’s not a size 0 anymore, and that’s all that matters to me. I’m now a proud fatvatar!
Oh, and the whole modeling thing didn’t work out for me, but it’s all good. I doubt anyone would want a plus sized avatar now, anyway 
Once I get my shape closer to what I look like in RL, I’ll post that. I’ve picked out the picture that I want to use, so now I just need to change my AV to look more like that. That’s a brave step for me, so it might take a bit. I might enlist the help of a photographer friend.
She’s So Unusual Fairy
I stepped a little outside my box and went with a fantasy-style picture…all because of the shoes! As I posted a couple of days ago, I recently won a $300 Gift Certificate to She’s So Unusual Shoes because of a photo Flickr contest that Rowan was holding. One of the shoes that I chose was the Pink Butterfly Flats. These shoes are absolutely adorable with little butterflies on the tips of the toes.
I had already decided that I would submit more photos for June’s Flickr contest, therefore these shoes alone inspired the entire picture below. However, with almost everything in my life (both Real and Second), there’s a story behind everything that I do! I guess that’s why I love blogging so much.
As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I am not as new to SL as my AV suggests. I returned in early May after leaving SL behind for a bit to take care of some things in RL. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I would make it back….but that’s not the point of my story. The point is that when I was thinking of what I was going to wear with the shoes for a picture, I knew I wanted to do a fairy-style picture. I looked all over for the perfect outfit. I searched in-world and in SL Exchange for ‘fairy’, for ‘pixie’ and even for ‘ballet’ and ‘ballerina’ and just couldn’t find what I was picturing in my head. I pride myself in having Google-Fu skills, but sometimes my SL searches are lacking. However, I remembered a Fab Free blog post from WAY BACK that had the dress that I was picturing. Sometimes my memory is just enough to be dangerous, and this case was no exception. I was pretty sure that I remember it being in November because of some events around that time that were popping into my memory along with the dress. I clicked on the Costumes tag in the Fab Free blog and went ALLLLLL the way back to November….couldn’t find it. Finally I just went to November and eventually found THE DRESS! The blog said that the dress was available for a limited time, so I was pretty sure that it was no longer free. I figured I’d check to see if it was Not Free, anyway. Low and behold, it was still free and still on the table as you enter DG Innovations! YAY!
I’ll spare you the details in searching for the perfect location for the picture, because you got it….there’s a story behind that, too! I settled on the Straylight sim and found the perfect spot near the landing point.
There’s still more to the story. Sometime during the massive perfect dress search or while taking the pictures in Straylight, Ashia Tomsen posted in the Free Style blog….featuring the dress that I spent at least an hour (possibly two) looking for! *HEAD.DESK* Now let it be known that I read MANY, MANY blogs throughout the day during my RL job, then at night when I am home in SL, so it’s just Murphy’s Law enough for Ashia to post sometime right after I found the dress. Since there’s no time stamp on the post, I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure that I would have seen it before my search began. But anyway, the picture is complete, and I’m happy….isn’t that all that matters?
Finally, here’s a closeup of the adorable Pink Butterfly Flats that inspired it all.
Shoes: SSUS! Pink Butterfly Flats
Skin: Tuli – S6 elf rose (group freebie)
Eyes: Sin Skins – Intense Sage/Gold
Hair: Frangipani Zoey – Fairyfloss
Outfit: **DG* Innovations – Mana
Wings: Neural Blankes (N) Wings ~ for Pink Butterfly Flats (found in the SSUS store)
Open Letter to Clothing Desginers
To the clothing designers who include the ad picture in the contents that I buy – THANK YOU!
To the clothing designers who DON’T include the ad picture in the contents that I buy – WHY THE HELL NOT?!?!
It’s SOOOOO much easier to sort inventory when I have a picture to go by, otherwise I have to try on the clothes again. Plus, not having a picture is like blindly reaching into the closet and just pulling something out. I try my best to categorize and add descriptions of the outfit, but my memory often fails me as to what the outfit is.
So if you don’t include the texture, please consider doing so. I am more likely to come back to your store and buy more if I know I will have a reference texture for my inventory. And no, I am NOT taking pictures myself. If I upload them, then that $10L each adds up after awhile, and that could have gone to something else. Storing them on my computer is no fun, either. You have the texture, just share it!
Thoughts on contests and inventory additions
- I’ve decided not to waste my time anymore on contests that are nothing more than popularity and traffic generating contests. These appear to be the most common ones that I have found. What happened to contests with real judges? Both the contests at Ellie’s and at Zanphoria have fallen into the category described above. All they seem to do is generate high traffic for the locations where the voting is taking place with people teleporting everyone in on their friend’s list. Since I’m still new and don’t have many friends yet, there was no way I even had a chance even from the beginning. I do want to thank my friends who did support me in these
- I did it…I broke down and bought a full pack of skins. I had been getting by with some very BEAUTIFUL free skins given out to various groups like Chai, Bianca F and Tuli. I sorta grew attached (pun intended) to the look of the Tuli skin, LOVELOVELOVE the freckles, and I got numerous compliments on it….from guys! I tried on the demo pack containing the other sets several times, and I would hover over the BUY button for a whopping $3750, but I just couldn’t do it. Well, today I did it. I hovered once and canceled then went right back to the BUY button and did it. No regrets! Now I have options….OOOH!
- The hairstyle I’ve been wearing a lot lately is from Detour. It’s a texture flexi style, and I am adoring it! I started watching Lost Season 1 all over again, and now my brain thinks that I look like Kate (Evangeline Lilly). I’m probably just crazy, though. I even went as far as checking out the Body Doubles store to look at a Kate shape, but I just can’t bring myself to buy a shape…sorry! I can make those easily. Plus, I have to admit that the Body Doubles store seems to be better at matching outfits and skin in comparable RL celebrity pictures than actually matching the shape. Just my 2 cents.
- I’m still looking for my niche in SL. Surely it’s not ONLY shopping and dancing! Modeling is probably not going to be my thing, because I don’t kiss butt enough, and I’m probably too shy to get to know some of the important people. I was a content creator in my past Second Life, and I don’t think I want to go that route again. I’ve applied at a couple of places for various things, but I’m sure since my AV just turned 1 month old last week, that I look like I’m a complete noob. I guess I’ll just hang around and see what happens.
Here’s my latest look, a bit closer than the picture in the previous entry:
She’s So Unusual Shoes Flickr Contest
It’s been a few days since I wrote anything, and actually I have some things I’d like to write. First of all, I just found out this morning that I won 2nd place in the She’s So Unusual Shoes Flickr contest! Granted, I don’t think a lot of the people understood the rules (you have to wear shoes from the store…duh!), so there wasn’t that many people to choose from, but I’m still excited! I won a $300 Gift Certificate for the store. I just turned in my order to Rowan, and as soon as I get the new shoes, I’ll be taking more pictures for June’s contest. I actually had a lot of fun with this contest, and I’ve bought some more poses to take pictures in for the next time.
Here I am standing at the front of the store with my Gift Certificate and the box that it came in. Below that is the picture that won. I submitted one other to the group, too.
