depression

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.

Darkwolf Sim

Darkwolf Sim, at Camelot dAlliez, has been demolished. The cranes came in and picked up the buildings while the bulldozers leveled everything except one corner of the sim. Needless to say, it’s been a busy weekend.

So, what exactly happened? Well, I’ve still been fighting the depression. I had just started to get past it, when the rug got pulled out from beneath me. I became very busy, and with the struggle to deal with life and the limited time that resulted, my depression sunk me down again. By the end of last week, I was looking for a way to climb back up. So, creativity was what I felt like was needed.

First, I was looking into getting a full sim of my own, instead of renting the homestead from d’Alliez as I am currently. I have two weeks left at my current sim before I have to pay again, which would have given me time to move things to the new sim. I’ve been wanting my own full sim with the maximum 30000 LI and full control for a long time. There is so much I could build and design on a full sim, and never have to worry about prim counts.

I thought things through for a while, looked at monthly costs and setup fees. I know I can afford it, but should I do it? Should I just wait for Sansar later this year? What would I do if it didn’t work out? Could I do anything with my existing homestead and a maximum of 5000 LI? I must have spent two or three hours debating before finally deciding that I couldn’t let my depression dictate my spending habits. I need to wait to get a new sim, if I get one at all.

After that decision was made, the next decision was what to do at my sim. I want to make changes, consolidate everything to my sim. How was I going to do that, though? I had bought the fatpack of all sim surrounds from Landscape Unlimited a few months back (Black Friday, if I recall). I started looking at those, both land and sky, to see what options I had. So, after several more hours of rezzing one after the other, I finally made my decision.

One corner of my sim has the Glade. This was a wooded area that was created by my SL sister, Indy. I wanted to see if I could preserve that. But my caverns (never completed), club, and home could go away. Instead, what I would do is move the club and home to separate levels in the sky, using the sim surrounds to make it appear that it was at ground level, while the actual ground was leveled, except for the Glade.

The first level was set up as a beach backed up against steep island walls. I moved the club builds up to that level, instead of recreating the buildings, and turned this into the new Darkwolf Lounge and Boardwalk.

The second level was a mountainous region with one level of the mountain set aside for the store. I created a very simple ground with four walls, and no ceiling, for the store. I built it in Blender, so it was only 3LI with the physics layer. I added my wrought iron fencing to the top of the walls for decoration. The reason it is open is for rezzing of the homes, as well as giving visibility to the mountains outside.

The third level was just a small beach with islands that wasn’t a full sim surround, but just tucked nicely into one corner of the sim. Just big enough for our small home, which I moved up from the ground as it was.

The fourth level was my build area, just an expanse of water with a copy of part of the club, so that I could design new club scenes if needed. Although that design might be revaluated for another sim surround, and my build area set up in that new surround. That’s something I’ll be looking at later.

Finally, I switched my sim from Adult to Moderate. As I’ll be moving the store to the sim, and nothing in the store is adult in nature, I don’t want to limit the possible visitors (not that I have many now anyways). The club won’t have any adult items, and while there may be nudity in the club, nudity is still allowed in Moderate sims. Flying is disabled on the sim, so the only way between the levels is through the teleport pads.

Hopefully, by the time I finish all this, I’ll be mostly back to normal, whatever normal is.

Depression

The battles with depression are harder some days than others. I probably should see a therapist about it, but that takes time to do. I don’t feel I need medication for it either, as my depression is rarely, if ever, crippling. Any suicidal thoughts I may have are always fleeting, and never anything that I’d carry through with, so I’m certainly no danger to myself.

Ever since my move and new job that depression has been greater. It has been a little more than two months now, and things are going great. I’m back in Southern California, a little further south from where I grew up. Very nice area, not far from the coast, no more than two hours away from practically everything. I can see my family more now, which, in my case, is a wonderful thing, having gone from about a seven hour drive to just over an hour away. The new job is much better than my last job, more responsibility, and always busy there. Even the pay is much higher, which was one of the motivating factors of the move. There’s always something to do, whether it is work or activities out. So much I’d like to do still, both on the computer and away from it. Yet, despite all those good things, there’s still the depression there more than it was before the move.

Going into Second Life for me was a way for me to be myself, nearly complete. Before the move, I spent countless hours online. I had more time to do things since I was working at home. Now, working in an office, my available time has become far more limited. Not to mention, there’s always been so much that I wanted to do, that even when I had more time, I wasn’t able to get everything done that I wanted. So now, instead of doing anything I wanted to do, I just avoided almost everything. The only times I’m in Second Life now is when my Mistress is on or when I’m DJing at my club on Saturday afternoon. The remaining time, I’d watch shows on Amazon Prime or just play Final Fantasy 15. Well, the latter was something from my “to do” list, so I suppose that is something.

This blog is something else from my list of things I want to do. This is an attempt for me to push past that depression and start taking control again. I’m finding it difficult to get the motivation, but I know that I need to go forward with it. This is not because anyone else cares whether or not I write anything here, nor is it done with any sense of vanity that I’m aware of. It’s simply because I think this will help me move forward, and give me an avenue to express myself and get past this current stage of my depression.

Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to depression. Other times, there are specific causes. Some of the causes can be fixed or changed, others have no control, and have to be accepted in one way or another, or it is impossible to move forward. There is so much going on in my life that it is easy to see where some of the areas of depression originate. Yet, at the same time, because there is so much going on, it can often be hard to find the individual trees in the forest of insanity.

As a final note for this particular blog entry, I had adopted the theme of Alice in Wonderland in my life when the Tim Burton remake was released. With how out of control my life seemed, and still does seem at times, it appeared to be a state of madness. This became a way to laugh at my own situation and try to accept everything that was out of control around me. I continue to hold to that thought, among others, as I navigate through the depression and try to make what sense I can out of all the madness.