May 2017

Store Updates

I’m starting to get out of my depression a little more, finally. Now I’m trying to get back on track with my store. Ultimately, I want to redo some of my older mesh models, improve upon my earlier works, but if I wait until I’m ready to do that, my store will never be updated. So, I’ve spent part of the weekend creating a new vendor to use with CasperVend for my store. I’m now slowly migrating my existing products to the new vendors with updated LMs, updating the Marketplace listings, and updating my new blog as each product is being readded. I’m using the date from the original blog post to keep things aligned. The first product has been updated, the rainbow bangles. These are just simple prim bangles that work with any avatar, and are only L$5 for the pair.

Silent Again

It was about two weeks of silence. I didn’t really get much accomplished in those two weeks either. Nothing from my list of things I wanted to do, that is. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. What is the point in anything? I go through the motions of the day, doing what needs to be done, and procrastinating on other things. Even now, as I write this, I’m asking myself why am I doing this. I’ve struggled a little with this before, but ever since the move, it seems to have gotten worse, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

The move was to a much better job, with a huge pay raise. I like the company I’m working for, and the people I’m working with. It’s always busy, but not usually overly stressful. I’m even planning on working out after I get off work to start getting in better shape. I’ve been trying to do that since starting the job, but something always seems to get in the way.

The move put me closer to my family than I was before. I’m in a rare situation where my family is not dysfunctional, very loving, and very close. Being able to be close enough to spend every holiday, like the upcoming Mother’s Day, with my family is wonderful. My parents even came down a few times to help me get some things done at my house, and then go out to dinner before they went back home.

There is so much more to do here, compared to where I lived before. Since moving down here, I’ve been going different places, eating at new restaurants, just doing different things as I’ve had the time. Usually that was on a Sunday, leaving my Saturdays home. The restaurants could have been at any time of the week. It really is great.

With all that, why am I struggling so much? What is it about myself that I haven’t fully grasped yet? Is there anything that I’m missing? Am I just trying to read too much into things? Why can’t I just enjoy this, and not worry about anything else?

I look back to before. I was working at home. I was off at 3pm, and from 3pm to 4pm, I spent an hour in SL, unless I had an appointment to go to in the afternoon. I’d usually be back in SL between 6pm and 7pm and spend the rest of my evening there. Then weekends I was almost always in SL. Hours upon hours in SL. Probably too much time. Now, I’m hardly in SL anymore. Technically, I could be in between 8 and 8:30, and stay until 10 or so. I do have time on weekends, maybe not as much as before, but still could be there most of the weekend. Yet I’m hardly there now. Is this good or bad?

Why is SL so important to me? Not just SL now, but my entire online identity. I’ve mentioned it before, but it is because that is where I can be fully me. In life, I live as everyone else expects me to live. I had thought about changing that before, but there are just too many risks that I’m just not willing to accept. So, to counter that, I express myself through my virtual self, which I think is more real than my real self. I am Trasee, and Trasee is me.

Does this mean that because I’m not in SL as much, I’m not Trasee? When I’m writing these blogs, writing my stories, playing games on my PS4, who am I? I’m still Trasee. When I’m at work or dealing with other things in life, I’m the other person I have to be. During those times, though, am I really thinking that way? No, I’m just doing what I need to do, regardless of my “identity.” So, what is it that’s really different? What is it that is keeping me in a depressed state more than before?

I don’t have the answers to it. In many ways I’m still trying to learn who I am. I had a couple blog posts here on who I am. Thinking back at them, I wonder how accurate they are. Just like everything else in life, things don’t always line up, and things change as time goes on. Those things I wrote are still true about me, but the reality is much more complex. So much that I have trouble seeing through the fog a lot of times.

For now, I just need to keep pushing forward. I want to push forward. Everything will work out in the end.