Second Life in First Life

Reading Amber's blog made me realise how different our SL is from a lot of people's. Like Amber SL is not something I have to hide, my whole family is aware of it and sitting here thinking about it, they are not just aware of it but SL is very much a part of my FL.

Okay for starters one of the reasons I use the term FL (First Life, not Florida!!), is that for me the term real life is not an apt term as I consider both my first life and second life to be "real". I am interacting with "real" people, have "real" friends, "real" feelings… you get the point!!

Amber and I spend quite a bit of time when inworld in private voice, the reason we usually stick to private is that our first lives go on around our SL, at any given time we both have family popping in and out of the room, Amber's family know who I am and my family know who she is. We will be up and down doing things in FL while on SL, chatting to kids, answering questions and all sorts of "normal" first life stuff. As Amber said you do get very quick with camming away when there are things around children shouldn't see or I find more often that during the time my child is around I am at the Cage so camming away is not an issue but using the inventory box to cover chat that a child shouldn't see is a handy skill!!

But I love that she is comfortable with my second life, that it is not something weird to her, yes she thinks of it as "mummy's game" but I really am not getting into the difference between a game and SL to a 9 year old!! She knows all my friends on sight, many times I will be at the Cage and she will walk in the room and go "oooh I like what MaD is wearing" and can pick all my friends AVs from across the room. And woe betide if I don't call her in to see the latest AV Pang is sporting …. mum is in trouble then… lol.

There are times when SL is all mine, no one is around and I can totally enjoy "my world" but I do love that I can also share it. An example of this was when I went on a tour of the Dresden Gallery in SL, and listened to the "audio tour". My daughter sat next to me as my AV wandered around a famous art gallery on the other side of the world, something that we would never have the chance to do in First Life.

And how do my family benefit from my being on SL? Well they have a person who is much more content and happy, trivial things that before would drive me crazy no longer bother me because I am happy in myself.

So Madam Amber to your FL friends who don't even want to acknowledge or understand SL… I say PFFFTTT to them because they are the ones missing out and I know that you would love to share the fun times on SL with them but that is their loss not yours and be glad that your immediate family are fine with you having SL as part of their lives because in that we are both blessed.

Ciao for now Q