It's a strange feeling

Maps and land have been a joy for me in Second Life. I've owned parcels in several areas over my tenure here, almost always either giving them away or selling them at a loss. I even sharked for a while finding bits of public and low cost land to pass on to people who already lived in sims.

In my old age, I became picky and scoured the map for lots that met strict specifications for specific types of builds, views and such. Over the past couple of months many of those locations have been set for sale, several with very reasonable prices, most within Fate Gardens' ability to cover the tier. In fact, a lot of them are still for sale after many weeks.

But oddly, I find my myself not the least bit excited or interested. For the first time since my first day in Second Life, the desire to find, buy, build on, and pass along plots of land has vanished wihtout a trace. Surely it's just a passing phase I thought the first month or so. But it finally seems a permanent change of heart.

It's a strange feeling. Does it ring a bell with anyone?

Yep.


Technical limitations, the fact so many things are thrown together in the grid, and the fact the fourth wall is constantly broken as things rez into existance have contributed to that in my mind.

Granted, I'm a bit more jaded than most from the getgo. But as SL plods along happily, I'm less and less interested due in no small part to its "one central grid" atmosphere.


And Lazarus, I'm looking at you as a prime example of this point.

I find that happens to me in real life with my job. I do freelance graphic art design and I get to where nothing comes out. I just can't create anything new.
It's like the mind is empty. And any ideas I do have are either old and I'm tired of seeing it or I simply have none.

This might sound a little cheesy but for me personally, movies and music play a roll in giving me a will to create. By seeing other works of art that people have done and seeing how it effects me personally. And especilly the effect it has on others when I ask them.

A visit to an art gallery would be nother option I could do in my situation. Anything to get some concepts or ideas and at the same time having it build, in my mind, a desire to effect people. Just as the music or art I saw effected me. It's something I feel I need to do for a good while afterwards.

If you truly enjoy what you do, or have a desire to effect something or someone, your mind will take over from there and make you want to create or do whatever it is you do.

That could be a totally different situation from what your talking about however.
I dunno what would inspire you to do more land searching. I'm not into that kinda thing and have never tried it. So I dunno what might drive a person to do so. But there must have been somethin you liked about it.

To me creating content for SL is the same as making art for my real life job.
But no matter what it is you do, I see it as if there are two sides to the idea of desire and effort.
The creating process, or acting out, what I like to do. (Burning off energy I have built)
And there is the searching process. Finding reasons for doing anything in the first place. (Refueling process)
You might just be out of gas and can't find a gas station.

Cheezy I know but I'm just trying to make sure I understand if that is what it feels like.

If this is what you mean then I guess one question to ask is, Does the "refueling" feel like work or does it come as something fun.
Or better yet, does it feel like something you need to do. If it is natural then that makes an easy cycle.
If finding that insperation is boring then that would be the complete burn out feeling.
No gas and no desire to even bother filling the tank.

I never find it hard to watch a few movies or listen to music. But again that is something a lot of people can do. But it has to be something that makes you want to write your own story or make an image to express what you want others to feel.
Basically to effect someone else is what I relate to.

I would assume doing things with land was inspired by seeing how someone else does it maybe? And being a part of the world directly?
Such as, if it wasn't for you then this or that person wouldn't have this or that land. And the whole of SL would be different entirly.
Maybe stepping back and seeing all the changes you did to the world would give a sense of wanting to do more?
Perhaps a few sucess stories would help from others?
I'm not sure what would drive ya. But that's my suggestion for what it's worth.

Sounds cheezy kinda but as far as I know everyone always needs a refuel process of some sort or another.

I think I hit a similar wall with scripting. I like to do little projects in SL when I'm just looking for something to do for a while. I've thought about making a nice avatar sensor display so I decided to work on one. I just got frustrated so quickly today. The script editor is slow and clunky, I got tired of typing things like llGetListLength (!&@E#!!!), I realized how much time I was going to waste coding around the absence of structures, etc. And then I felt like this was more a test of my patience than a hobby, and exited SL. I've started to feel like I do when I pay $50 for a console game and then realize I'm supposed to prove myself worthy in order to access 80% of the content. Blech.

Perhaps it's down to experience, after a while when the initial awe is lost you begin to realise the implementation is flawed in so many ways. When I get in those moods I find it hard to do anything in SL too. But then I'm forced to remember there isn't anywhere else to go... no competitor gives us what we get in SL ... not yet at least. At these times I stop building and scripting and go hang out with friends to recharge. But my batteries aren't filling with enthusiasm like they did before. The worst of it for me is in the last few months I've lost all sense of community.

...
And an aside because it seems a little related to this thread ... I looked at the map this morning and laughed because at a particular zoom it looks like the entire grid is for sale...
/130/4e/80295/1.html

I'm done with land. I love the land I have. I have no interest in buying more or switching any of it. Instead, i'll spend 2006 tweaking the builds i have on it, and making stuff. The land business is so stressful. I just want to enjoy what i have.

I love your suggestions, Shawn! Not cheezy.

Cadroe says: "I realized how much time I was going to waste coding around the absence of structures, etc. And then I felt like this was more a test of my patience than a hobby, and exited SL."

I can identify with this. I've known since I started there aren't more builders precisely because it is a test of patience. I'm pretty good at patience, but there's also the fact that once you get through the whole huge patience part on a project, or even half-way through, you may not even like what you made, and I have not really found a good mock-up strategy to save any of that time, though I've tried.

Like I said in another thread, when I found myself wishing I had a computer program to make lining up the walls and whatnot more automatic, I realized I was actually working with something very, very crude. I still wish for the automatic roofs of the Sims.

Then in 1.6 they made it so I always have to exit OUT of the textures part of the edit box in order to change the texture on the next prim - and several other little changes in 1.6 also turned one step into two. This just makes it more patience-testing. I'm still irritated about that. Why did they do that? I can't figure out any advantage to it, or possibly understand what went through the person's mind who changed that. Cause it looks more like a deliberate change than a bug.

And if that weren't enough, there are the various bugs. For example, the spring-back bug that, oddly, just seems to appear on certain nights. I don't know why.

The only good thing about all the bugs is it prevents more competition (appropos of Yumi's thread about saturation of markets). But even that's not good, because when I hit a bug, I think aboutfor all the new builders who don't know how to work with it and just feel so sorry for them.

I'm not to the point yet where all this bothers me hugely, and I still have way more I want to make, and enjoy doing it. But . . . I do identify with what Cadroe has said, and sometimes feel it really is a matter of time where the tediousness of the process outweighs enthusiasm for projects.

coco

Speaking of the map and land, I went around last night looking for 32m pieces, or two 16m pieces, to fill up my tier.

Let me tell you that is a dismal process. It makes me so appreciative of the two places where I live. One is Azure Islands, so of course that's nice. But the other - Rosieri, where I have my shop - is a pretty new Sim (I got my First Land there), and I guess, just lucky, I suppose because a number of residents have gotten fairly large pieces of it, and outnumber the small 512's that the owners never come back to, and the same is true in the next Sims over.

Cause these places I visited last night are total wasteland hellholes, and there are bunches of them. There are people with their 512's and larger, but they are surrounded by TOTAL CRAP. I was wanting to use my little 32m like I did the last one I had, as a little mini-store with a sign and six houses, but you know what? I wouldn't WANT my stuff associated with all the tacky signage (not even counting those from you know who) crapping up all these places.

And some of the small parcels for sale were in water, in front of someone else's nice house! Who would want to put their sign in front of someone else's nice house and water view? It would be criminal to buy one of those small water plots, even if they were amenable to a mini-store, which they aren't; a little store would look even stupider in the water than the signs do. Yet people have bought them and stuck up a stupid sign.

And whatever legitimate is sharing those areas, well, one hopes they abandoned their lands long ago. It is a mess out there, folks.

coco

Don't worry.

Them are just the ebbs and flows of life.

Creative juices flow in waves, sort of like radio waves.

You will bottom out eventually and come back charging hard as ever.

Only do do it all over again,

and again,

and again

Ok this could be easily fixed with zoning.

Why zoning hasnt been implemented into SL is beyond me.

Yes Khamon it does.

Mar/Cat

residential/commerical zoning?

Better.