New Directions

My to-do list has expanded from nothing to full. Okay, I suppose “full” is relative. For ME, 3 items is full. There I was, relaxing after throwing my very first SL party, but starting to wonder what exactly I should do with my time. Even I need to leave the beach occasionally.

In one of those wonderful serendipitous coincidences, casual comments made in RL translated into SL and SL comments translated into RL. I am FINALLY acting on one of my original SL goals – I am learning to script. 🙂 Oh yeah, I’m really going to do it. I have hired myself a teacher even. I had my first class today AND I have my first homework assignment. It even has a BONUS section!!!! WOOT! Of course, notice that instead of actually DOING said assignment I have chosen to blog about it. Oops. I may have to reorder priorities here. So wish me luck, wish me perseverance and wish me patience. Because I already know that I HATE the blankety-blank curly braces. 🙂

I went wandering through blogs the other day, reading some I’d not seen before. Stumbled on a fashion blog, writing about skins. I’ve been thinking about skins for awhile now. I have some drop-dead gorgeous friends in SL. I usually feel quite fine about myself, but when I’m standing next to THEM, well, I feel a bit drab. Very noobie-ish. So I’m not sure if that’s a “skin” issue or a problem under my skin issue, but I’ve been thinking about skins. So I have begun researching them. Shopping about, looking at them, trying to figure out what it all means to me and what I want. And if you don’t think that is a major undertaking well, you don’t know about SL skins and you don’t know me. 🙂

I am also quite excited because I have been given the opportunity in RL to expand my time in SL. I have incredibly supportive management as I have mentioned in the past. They have agreed to allow me time during the work day to build my opensim/SL skills. Even more exciting, they agreed that should I find someone who actually wanted me, I could volunteer part of my time to that group to do opensim work. So I am beginning a search to see if there is any place for a budding scripter/builder-experienced boot wearer. Hey – I’ll learn whatever they want me to learn. I need to learn everything, so it doesn’t matter to me at this point where it starts. Which circles right back to learning to script. I don’t know that I actually expect such volunteer work to materialize, but the simple fact that I have backing to pursue this course of action is exhilarating. Botgirl posted only yesterday about how if you can break out of mental ruts by confronting your brain with new stimuli then surely being an avatar in SL is just such a potent trigger. I feel like exhibit A in her case.

So having completed my very first class in scripting, I needed to celebrate. I headed over to check out the candy canes Santa spilled at Shengri La. I met up with Shenlei, Hell and Lul there. They got to share in a “first” for me. I never got to sit on Santa’s lap as a child. Yes, yes, I know – I had a deprived childhood. I STILL didn’t get to sit ON Santa’s lap, but at least I got to meet him. Hell sat guard as chaperone to make sure nothing untoward happened. (There is something odd about a Spawn of Hell acting as chaperone for Santa.) Then Santa invited us all for a ride around Shengri La (we spilled more candy canes as we took off). Lul and I were racing the reindeer – I hope they won’t be too tired come Christmas Eve. Then Hell took off, but he promised to bring Santa back so you all could sit and visit with Santa as well!