Welcome Back To SecondLife...

(Please note that this post is much longer due to not posting from a cell-phone)

 I just logged in to my oldest Second Life account a moment ago, landed where I logged off about five years ago, and got greeted by someone who commented on the age of my avatar - how seldom seen are nine-year-old avatars in Svarga (or did they mean in-game?). We conversed about what took away from the experience of creative play when first exploring that digital place.
 Seeing that earning lindens (the in-game currency) by scripting sailboat simulations could actually be converted into real currency and buy a real sailboat was when it became less creative play and more work that was creative; the fun was lost after that point and scripting simulators just felt too much like work for them.

What am I doing back in SecondLife?

 Well, I have been watching Netflix documentaries for months and months and I was beginning to get burned out. Also - there are only so many fictional scenes I can imagine from novels before I need to switch to non-fictional concepts.
 I tried to enter into a programming course... Got through the first two weeks and then realized 'hey - I am not getting a grade at the end of this course; what's the point if I'm not going to pass or not pass/get a failing grade or a high grade?'
 Second Life offers me that semi-tangible feeling of creating something and gaining social interaction - a reward - for just logging in. With this MOOC, with programs, with fiction, non-fiction, and movies - I am not getting much in the way of commentary: just one-way interaction. Second Life offers two-way interaction - and that's what I am looking for right now.

What was my original intent there?

 To explore simulacra. As in Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. I had read the book and shattered my mind against his philosophies - a 15 year old American lower-class kid. So I started getting into virtual spaces. Second Life became the ultimate expression of that search for simulation and understanding how to tell what order of simulacra were in my life at the time. After I began to get intrigued with college and that college experience intrigued itself with Second Life - I began to back away. The final backing-away came when I had a job for a year and a month (nine months or so of actually working). Too much first life to engage in the second life.