My getting angry over the unexpected drastic changes to the default Sansar female avatar has led me to make two conclusions:
- That I need to get a life; and
- That I need to let go of a dream onto which I’ve held too tightly for too long.
Part one is obvious to anybody who reads this blog 😉 and, I do assure you, I have made valiant, continued efforts to have a real life outside of virtual reality and virtual worlds! But part two is something I only realized today, after some quiet thought over my lunch break.
There is a category of my blog called Adventures in Virtual Fashion Design, where I posted about my learning how to use Marvelous Designer to create avatar clothing in Sansar, and where I shared my dream: to become a virtual fashion designer and own and run my own store, my own brand, and be able to make a little side income to supplement my pension when I retire. A creative outlet. A hobby. Maybe even a tiny fashion empire like those I had seen people build in Second Life!
Today, I realized that one of the reasons I got so upset over the changes to the default female avatar in Sansar is that it would mean that I would need to remake all the clothing that I had already created and put up for sale in my store on the Sansar Store. And frankly, it has been so long since I taught myself how to do all that work in Marvelous Designer, that I’d forgotten almost all of it, and would need to start all over again.
You need to keep working on a skill to strengthen it, and I had let that particular set of skills wither, as I worked on my paying job during the work week, and as I worked on this blog and the Metaverse Newscast in the evenings and on weekends. And I discovered that I was good at those things! Perhaps better at those things, than I would be if I were to take up avatar fashion design again (although of course you never know).
So, reluctantly, I will shutting down my store today, and taking all my avatar clothing items off the market, except for one. I don’t want to offer clothing items that were designed for avatars that no longer exist, and I don’t want people to have to fuss and fiddle with my clothing to make it fit Avatar 2.0 avatars. So it’s all coming down. I did get a small thrill every time I sold an item, though, and every time I saw someone in-world wearing a T-shirt or a dress I made!
I don’t know when I will be able to resume work on this project. I might wait until Linden Lab finalizes the body morphing on the current Sansar avatars, which is supposed to happen within the next four to six months, according to Landon Linden. Or I might wait until I take full retirement from my paying job and I have more time. We’ll see.
But I do know that it’s time for me to let go of my dream, as least for now.
Somehow Anshe Chung became the poster child for becoming successful in virtual reality. Everyone drank the kool aid, from individuals, to large companies. The corpos jumped ship, but the dreamers stayed. Those of us who realized the potential of a new medium. And we made it our home online.
Being successful takes many forms, over many different venues. And sometimes we need to reinvent ourselves as often as we reinvent our avatars. I chased my own vision of the goal. I have more branches on my path than a large oak tree. I’m not rich yet. Hell, I’m not even making money yet! But what I do see isn’t that you need to be dedicated to a single platform. Nor even to a single venue. I started my virtual journey in VRML, in an unlikely successful location called Cybertown.com in 1998. I’ve seen more worlds come and go than you can shake a stick at. Right now, I’m tinkering away on a blog dedicated to the town of Bedstraw on the Heterocera continent in SL. My main blog has been running since around 2006. And both don’t generate squat for me. But I keep doing it for the love of life online. I’m not going to get serious about making money until AFTER I’m retired in the default world.
You have your blog, your newscast, and your fashion shop. Many people in the default world would think you are WILDLY successful! So what if your clothing brand is tanking because of recoding? Instead of deleting everything, just let it ride. Once it stops making money, you wait until LL has finished their model. Then when you feel that you’re ready to tackle it again, jump back into fashions. And pour your energy into the blog and newscast. And if something shows up that grabs your attention, run with it! Good luck!!
Thanks, Joey!