My First Life imposes a set of "fixed costs" on time allocation: a full-time job, cooking and eating, household chores, activities such as food shopping, and, one hopes, a sufficient amount of sleep, not to mention the time that goes into keeping a relationship with my wonderful and tolerant SO healthy and thriving. That doesn't leave a lot of time for my Second Life. I steal time for SL by giving up things in FL. I'm not allowing enough time to read. I hardly watch TV. I don't play my guitar very often. I'm very bad at answering letters and e-mail. And sometimes the amount of sleep is not really sufficient.
It's difficult for me to find the right balance between FL and SL, yet I get so much out of SL, I hate giving it any less time than I can manage. Even in-world there seems never to be enough time! I love to spend time with Patrice, hanging out together at clubs (which is sometimes networking and not just dancing and chatting), going shopping, making love, just talking to each other, and finding adventures (we need more of these). It's more difficult to make time to keep up with other friends, to work on building projects, to learn new skills, and to explore—not to mention learn to fly my airplane without crashing, improve my skydiving accuracy, and do yet more shopping. There are so many possibilities.
It could be worse. There are numerous electronic publications about SL, such as New World Notes, the Second Life Herald, Second Style, and Linden Lifestyles. I try to keep up, but there is just too much information. OK, I do try a bit harder with Linden Lifestyles, just because I find so much great (and always entertaining) fashion advice there. But in general, I'm sure I miss out on many SL possibilities simply because I can't find the time to know they exist.
I'm also having too much fun blogging about SL to give that up—yet more time. I also enjoy reading other SL blogs (see links at right). Patrice's blog, fortunately, is more about pictures than text as I follow her terraforming career. Cheyenne's blog entries take a bit more time, but she's a creative and entertaining writer who finds more things in SL than I do, so I always want to keep up with her adventures. I love to read about what new insights Sorcha comes up with. Mordecai's blog contains romance and adventure, both entertaining and useful. And lately I've been trying to keep up with Melissa's entries as well. It's fascinating to learn of the ways in which SL is different for each of us and the ways in which it is similar.
I'm curious to know how other people manage their time, especially people who seem to find more for SL. I want your secret! Maybe someone has invented the Time-Turner that Hermione Granger uses in the Harry Potter books. If they have, no doubt I haven't had time to read about it!
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4 comments:
I know what you mean Veronique! I wish I had a time-turner as well! There is only so much time I have for SL after I'm finished my RL work and responsibilities. And my time with K is very short but sweet. Time zone and schedule differences. I never take moments with him for granted and I just savor them until I'm with him again. So I guess that's my secret. To savor the moments we can spend in our SL!
All I can say is: if you find out, Véronique, could you please post it so I can manage my time, too? I think you'll find it a common problem.
Veronique (how did Melissa manage that acute e?), I'm afraid my RL is in quite a mess. I tend to do RL stuff around my SL stuff, which is bass-ackwards, but then I've always been a contrary being.
I'm getting a LITTLE better, but the front porch light has been burned out for two months and I've have the left side of the kitchen sink shut off for weeks. Somehow it's more important to put in waves at Pele than fix the leak. And it's DEFINITELY worth it to spend the time with my Sweetie.
At least I still manage to get to my RL job!
Using an RSS reader like Bloglines is definitely one good way to get through your reading in a faster way- it will show you any new posts from your favourite blogs in a single pass.
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