What Do You Do With Your Second Life Community, When You Need To Leave SL?

Yesterday, longtime SL blogger Mygdala March announced she needed to take an indefinite hiatus from Second Life for a very important reason.

Actually, for two of them.

And though she plans to return after her babies are older, this respite means asking her "digital companions" (as she calls them) to accept her change in focus:

Some of you aren’t interested in my life outside of Second Life, and hey, that’s alright too. I totally understand that. This started out as a Second Life blog, and I do intend to keep it that way. But unlike real life, or first life, or whatever you like to call it, my Second Life can wait a little while.

Instead, she recommends SL friends stay in touch with her via Plurk and Twitter. If you've been in a similar situation, having to leave Second Life for awhile (or permanently), what did you do with your network of beloved avatars? Did you leave them all without any advance notice, keep in contact with every one of them, or something in between?

Comments

[Loki]

about a year ago i had to leave SL for a couple of months and did not know wether i would be returning anytime soon.
My main worry was the island thats known as Nemo beach which had become a home for quite a few friends. The fear was that if i left nemo beach would dissapear for ever so with the help of my best SL friends we moved the island from an anshechung rented land to a then 'open space' sim. This allowed the place to be taken care off while i was away. In the end i did not leave as long as i thought i might have to, but im happy now that if sumfin bad does happen to me real world, there are many who can look after what is essentually a place thats grown beyond my own personal home.

I have set up an arrangment so that if something unexpected would happen to me, there is someone who can go in world and tell a specific friend who will then tell all my friends.

[CyFishy Traveler]

If something catastrophic happens to me, my friend Miles Montgolfier has a short list of avies to notify. If I'm afk because I'm leaving town or something, I'll make a note of it in my blog. Other than that, I've been known to disappear for long stretches and only have people say "my, it's been a while" upon my return.

[Adric Antfarm]

I think when you need to take time (and we all do), it's nice to leave a note to a friend or something in your profile or blog (just don't fake anything) saying you needed to step back for an undetermined span.

Not so much a worry as I plan to go out screaming drama, but I did worry how I will do that when I leave the first life unexpectedly. Until I found this Wordpress plugin.

http://tzafrir.net/nextofkin/

After a set number of weeks without a login, it will generate an email asking me what the deal is. If I am too dead to take action, it will then send an email I've prepared with passwords and details to a RL friend who is asked to tie things up neatly in an also prepared 4000 word eulogy on how the word is a darker place with me not in it and the few hurtful words I was holding back to a few hundred or so feeling they were too cruel yet wanted to get in before I did die.

I've also asked this be done in my bunny outfit with Last Train to Clarksville playing loudly.

[Darien Mason]

My separation from Second Life was involuntary, but I am still in close contact with my Steamland friends through a variety of means: email, blogs, IMs, Twitter, Facebook, Nings, even a jury-rigged IRC client so I can still participate in weekly town meetings! I may not be a Second Life user anymore, but I am STILL a member of SL's Stampunk community!

[Ace Albion]

I think if you have any kind of value on the friendships you make online- even if you cling to your privacy, you have to make sure there is a way for people to know when/if you are going to disappear. Not doing so, I think, is selfish and cruel.

It might be interesting to look into why people feel they can't take time (even 30 minutes) a week to log into SL- people who left to spend all their time in WoW or (gasp) RL or whatever. Does SL need more ways to keep people in touch? SLim barely works, and can't be picked up by the IM. People are using Plurk and Facebook- I see the Lab trying to work their way into Facebook with apps and promotions, but they seem to have missed the part where Facebook will delete any account suspected of being an SL avatar name, not exactly a great idea to encourage SL users to sign up there.