April 26, 2006 at 9:05 pm was my birth in Second Life, or rez day.  Three years later, I am still pursuing my metaverse dreams of making a living using virtual worlds to pay my physical world bills.  There have been moments of absolute highs and the lowest of lows.  Technology at the bleeding edge is not for the faint of heart or impatient mortals.

As is my tradition on my previous rez day, I have taken a moment to reflect on Second Life.  I will not do a major recap like I did last year on my 2nd rez day, instead I spent part of the day just looking around, visiting old places with most no longer there but a few are still around.  I always go back to the Waterhead Welcome Area were I first entered SL.  It has not changed much at all over the years.  There were 39 people in the area when I arrived today.  I have always wondered about people who hang out in welcome areas.  How many of them are there to help or to exploit?

Then tradition dictated that I turn left at the road leading out of the welcome area to travel the same route I originally did.  This is where things change which is the norm for this virtual world versus a world like World of Warcraft were things only get expanded, rarely changed.  One comment about turning left, it has nothing to do with my political leaning but more of a quick no nonsense decision.  At the time three years ago, going left seemed just the thing to do.

Now turning left, I did run into the “Resident Awards” area where an old help station area use to be.  I had read about this location in Crap Mariner’s blog.  I have never been a fan about resident awards due to the nature of voting / friendship.  I was interested to see how the award was built more than who had won though I admit I am interested in meeting Vickie Greenwood after reading about her on Talia’s blog.

As I continued my solo journey, I saw Pooley Stage had some additions and the Linux group had done a rebuild, plus tons of stores that may or may not be the same.  After a while, most of them do look alike.  I did notice that the “rubber band effect” when crossing sims has vastly improved from my original walk.  For three hours I traced my route as best as I can now remember and was able to use that time to reflect on the last three years.

As Plato wrote, “An unexamined life is not worth living.”   So when examining the last three years, the first thing is that time has become more precious to me.  There are so many things to do and so little time to do them.  The second item I came up with is while this past year was not the economic win that year two was, I am still making a living creating content in SL.  I do see numerous economic opportunities despite the current limitations of the technology.  Third, I do think that I need to hook up with a bigger group eventually, just so the ups and downs can be smoothed out.  Fourth is the evolution of the technology, notably Open Source Sims as the future, especially once the avatar movement is user friendly.  On a personal level, Second Life is very much like my physical life.  Unlike others who use this world to explore alternative lifestyles to the one they have, I am in Second Life the same person I am in Santa Cruz – with all of the good and bad that involves.

Overall I view  my first three years as a success, both professionally and personally.  I wonder what will happen in year four.  Good luck to us all and thanks for reading.