HOME is where my HEART is!

Again and again I am forced to reflect about HOME: What is home? Why am I confronted so many times in my life(s) with this topic? What can I learn from my experiences?

I was happy in Second Life - I as my avatar and my clicker as well. Monkey was my home - I really felt like a Monkey! I wanna place analogies today to learn. So the question to ask would be: Did I ever feel like home somewhere in real life? I am happy to state: Yes, I really feel home in the town I moved for studies and stayed till now. Once I questioned it in earlier years, but after a month near polar circuit and some weeks in the US I knew again, home is in this town which allows me to live close to the beach. I guess that is one really important part of my personal favorized home location: water. I love water! And I definetly have more connection to the sea then to my home town. And I always lived seaside in Second Life - from the early days till today.

But am I connected to a certain house? No! Not yet? Who knows what might be one day in the future...
In Second Life I even did change my houses living on the same land plot. Could I say I am vagrant or am I just flexible to adapt to living various circumstances? In Second Life as in real life? Most of my Second Life living situation is displayed in this article: http://myavatarmind.blogspot.de/2010/11/my-residential-history.html. Its my tenth move in regions in Second Life.  In real life I will manage the 15th move of my life in the near future. But well, I might be a bit older in real life than in Second Life.

Right now in real life I am forced to move as well as in Second Life. The RL home will become a major building site for minimum a year and who wants to live on site? Not us! So RL a new flat was needed and we were lucky enough to find a better place in a terrible estate situation not too far away from the old one.
In Second Life my old home will sink. The ocean will absorb Monkey soon. There will just be Monkeys at heart left - no "real" residents anymore. Monkey will be gone - always and forever. Something which makes me sad, as it really felt like home. Now, I found a new home. A "better" one, as my hut at Monkey was shabby - well I chose it that way myself. It's a more expensive one as well. If I could choose I'd avoid that part in SL as well as in RL, but the market claims the price, eh!? ,-) Will I feel like part of a special community like I did when I was a Monkey? Rarely...
But as I realize that is one thing I liked about Monkey, may I be able to become part of another community in my new RL district? Maybe, as I now know, that this is something I might care about. I might try harder now, even if I'm kinda individual person.

In Second Life I chose a place for living close to my favorite neighbor and friend Dee. I already lived on that sim sometime ago. Funnily I just realize, I move back to a part of my town, where I already lived in RL as well. Not 'cause of a neighbor though, but because I was happy over there. I keep some of my social surroundings and add some new. Kinda similar, eh?

Last but not least, home is where my heart is. In Second Life my heart mostly belongs to the arts, my thoughts, writing about it and talking to my SL friends what some days motivate me to blog like today (thanks Vally! ;-))
In RL I am happy I can start a new chapter of living in an environment I already loved once with the people I love most. And I might write....and they lived happy ever after!
(Well, not in Second Life. I bet there are some more chapters to write here ,-))

Blogging at Monkeys for the last time!?

A must to go and enjoy...already checked out the sim, while making the poster for the invitation.

Where am I nowadays?

Miss R kinda vanished. Miss R that was me, is still me, but I am hardly acting in Second Life the last month. Some people make up stories about unused avatars meeting up in a bar, where they hang, till their clickers want to use them in a virtual world. I don't believe in that theory. Well, actually I know, that such place does not exist at all. Avatars vanish or even die like real people do, when they dissapear. Mostly the thoughts about us - the vanished ones - by other people or avatars or even clickers keep us alive, in memory. Maybe this is, why people collect pictures in virtual worlds, like lots do in the real world - to keep images alive. And this synthetic world does not only change constantly people wise, the landscape changes over night often and areas dissapear from one day to the other.

I'm not gone forever, even if this is one of my longest periods I did not materialize in my world. Well once in a while I have to, to pay the rent for my home, as I still live at Monkey Beach. But I didn't hang with friends, went to my favorite club CBGB (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lanestris/123/223/99), surfed or explored in ages at it seems. Why is that? What changed? Do I or my clicker miss being here?

I usually was used as an assistant for work, to relaxe my clicker or get her new impressions through explorations. Maybe real life was already bringing a lot of new stuff to her? Maybe she was extraordinary relaxed, maybe she stopped working for a while? She does not tell me. I just know, I miss hanging with my avatar friends some days, the feeling of being involved in this world, getting inspired here, listening to great music and as well as gardening. Gardening yes, no need to water plants in SL, no way you can get dirty hands by gardening, if you don't want to...perfect..just fun and some eye candy.
My clicker just told me, she misses this as well, but for a long time she had no idea, how to get the old vision back, she had, when she was acting in this virtual world through me. That might be different to an online game, where you have given quests to solve and not do what you wanna do, like you can in Second Life, a life sim. Maybe sorting out her own life different in some fields, needed a break from the virtual to find out how to act in here now, with another real life background?

In former days we philosophed about, how you are always one step ahead in the virtual world. Meaning, you often try out stuff, you want for your real life in the virtual, before you go real. Or you see tendencies in your virtual life, that might inspire you for your real life as well. But it seems this can happen the other way around as well. I guess that is why some avatars are dying. For example it's much easier to create a new avatar with a new personality, than turning your avatar personality to another.

Being away has some benefit though. You learn who your "real" friends are. Which the people are, who care for you. People sending you messages, if you are okay, still alive or similar content. People making you go online once in a while to have a chat or send some lines back. People you miss as well. Those people will always be part of the reasons, why avatars come back.  Besides the personal reasons everyone has...I sure will have to go on working for my clicker again. And maybe one day I'll be a lucky avatar again, to be allowed to have a bit of a "private life" again, to just hang and chill in this virtual world. I dream about those days and I know already, I will have to redesign my land, when I come back seriously and not just for a short break, as a symbol for a new era. I don't think, I changed so much, but I know that even small changes in my inner self, were accompanied by new homes here always. And I am curious, what my clicker will be up to when it's time...time to be back! And time to redress....omg I did not redressed since month. I am happy I don't live in "The Sims" where I sure would have died by now, for not using the bathroom or being a totally depressed avatar throwing myself from the rooftop. ;-)