Ladies and gentlemen, I am bored.
You know you’re bored when you take a Second Life avatar and park her in front of the lucky boards at Scandalize and just sit there, waiting for your letter to show up:
I mean, yes, it is minimally productive in that I am adding to that particular alt’s inventory, but I already endlessly shop for fabulous freebies for all my alts, so it’s not like they’re going to be running around the grid naked. (Although there are sims where that is perfectly acceptable. This is Second Life; you do you, boo.)
Lately I have been hanging out at three different (virtual) places in much the same way as bored, pre-pandemic teenagers used to hang out in front of my local Seven-Eleven convenience store:
- Second Life (my old reliable standby);
- Clubhouse (the hot new drop-in audio app); and
- Twitter (another old reliable standby).
I’m not sure what I think I am going to find by constantly going online and checking these three places. I have the attention span of a gerbil on benzedrine; I pop in and out of rooms on Clubhouse with alarming alacrity lately, barely listening to a sentence or two before I decide to bail and move on to the next room. What am I searching for? God knows. But I am certainly not finding it lately.
I have no shortage of practical tasks that need doing: a kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom that need cleaning; pharmacy receipts to enter into my insurance portal; a workbook with cognitive behavioural therapy exercises to complete (one of the many tools in my ever-expanding arsenal to combat my chronic clinical depression).
Speaking of depression, yes, I am going to lose my psychiatrist, who is leaving Winnipeg to accept a position in British Columbia. I am happy for her, but I am going to miss her, and it will be extremely difficult to find a new psychiatrist to take me on as a patient. She promises to try and find me somebody, but she is going to have to call in all her favours, and use every bit of her persuasion. The pandemic has caused a tsunami of mental health issues in Manitoba, as it has globally, which has led to a shortage of professionals to diagnose and treat people who are struggling and suffering, It is the worst possible time to lose a psychiatrist. It wasn’t good before, but now the situation is even worse. If all else fails, I will have to rely on my family doctor for treatment, a prospect neither of us particularly relishes.
I am restless. I putter around the apartment, go sit out on the patio next to the woods behind my apartment, and watch the budding trees and listen to the birds, but then I get restless again and park myself in front of my computer, reload Second Life for the umpteenth time, restyle an avatar for the umpteenth time. Then I log off, and go lie on the sofa with my trusty iPhone, scrolling through my hallway on Clubhouse to find an interesting room. Sometimes I even listen to a room on Clubhouse while scrolling through my Twitter feed!
People, I am stuck in a well-worn rut. I am bored, bored, BORED.
And yes, I know that I could put on my Valve Index VR headset, crank up Tilt Brush or load NeosVR, and get creative, but I don’t feel creative.
God, I wish this pandemic were over already.
UPDATE 9:13 p.m.: Well, I did land this wonderful outfit from one of the lucky boards at Scandalize, however, while listening to a Clubhouse room about unconditional love and gratitude which is lifting my spirits this evening:
So, I might be bored, but I can still find some peace, grace, beauty, and solace in the middle of a pandemic, in my rather unconventional virtual spaces and my rather quirky Ryan Schultz ways! May you also find your moments during this pandemic.