Eshi Leaves: How Do You Keep Your Second Life From Overwhelming Your First Life?

Around the time Philip Linden was announcing his departure from full-time management of Second Life, someone else important to SL had an announcement of her own to make: Citing many motivations, Irene Morris, well-known in-world as the talented metaverse artist Eshi Otawara, has abandoned her avatar. Or as she puts it on her site,

The Eshi Otawara name is NOT a Second Life avatar anymore. Eshi Otawara is an ongoing business concern owned by Irena Morris.

In a way, Eshi and creative individuals like her are just as important to Second Life as Philip Linden himself, for if it was Philip who first conceived of a world of boundless imagination, it was Eshi and her colleagues who made that vision real. At the same time, Eshi's departure points out a recurring challenge of the Second Life experience: It's often difficult to maintain a balance between one's avatar identity and one's first life, especially when there's a mismatch between the two. For instance, virtual acclaim without sufficient monetary reward, and declining physical health while owning a perfectly trim avatar, two things Eshi complained about in her departure notice.

I haven't spoken with Eshi in awhile, but I'm sad to see her leave (even though I have a feeling she'll be back in one form or another soon enough.)  Speaking more generally, I have talked with Residents in a situation similar to what Eshi faced, and offered advice like this:

• It isn't enough to become a famous in-world content creator, you need a business plan too, and willingness to treat it as a job.
• If you do want to turn your SL content into a business, you may want to have an alt avatar that's separate from your adoring fans/needy customers.
• Second Life is an adjunct and enhancement to your first life, not a replacement. If the former is suffering due to the latter, you're doing it wrong.

What do you advise, when someone finds their Second Life overwhelming their first one? What did you do, when that someone is you?

Image from "The Husband that Eshi Made".

Comments

[Isadora Fiddlesticks]

Eshi's situation is different, you can't just dismiss it and say the third comment. She had her grief to deal with, it's not a matter of "doing it wrong". There wasn't wrong with what she did, considering with the things she had to go through.

I think it's valuable for Eshi to have finally gone out of her shell and comfort zone to evolve and step out into the wide world, even if it came to a point where she is getting negative feelings about logging in. While I'm sad a valuable asset of SL is leaving, I'm happy for her sake...:)

[coco]

Or you could put your kid in a balloon for a reality tv show.

Virtual Fame is a bitch. Dont let blogs hype you.

[Hamlet Au]

"Eshi's situation is different, you can't just dismiss it and say the third comment."

I wasn't referring that to her, necessarily, I meant all three as general comments.

[Isadora Fiddlesticks]

i knew it wasn't you who said that, but the general comments, hamlet...:)

but that said, Eshi's time in SL is a phase she needed, and now she's more than ready to go on. I hope she carries on with confidence, ready to take RL on...:)

[radar]

The comment about "you're doing it wrong" is technically correct, but sounds really wrong. SL takes lots of time if you are doing a business or anything that requires regular logging in, and I know personally several people who just log in for hours a day, every day, and have for years. It's not healthy to have a life skewed towards any activity too much, but a lot of people do.

I admire and applaud Irene for doing what she felt she had to in order to get balance and not just get sucked into being Eshi because it was easier.

The best thing anyone can do in relation to SL is have a situation where they can log in when they want, and ignore it for days or weeks at a time when they want, and not have people aghast that they could possibly not want to log in. Sometimes computers and avatars and virtual worlds are a poor substitute for real life.

It's like eating the same dinner every night - you wouldn't do that to yourself, and you for sure wouldn't do it to your family, yet a lot of people do just that to themselves and their families with SL by sitting in front of the computer with their backs turned on everyone for hours a night, every day.

A friend of mine really did have it correct when he looked around at how others were behaving in SL and then said in his offhanded way "I'm not stealing time from anyone," knowing full well not many people could honestly make that pronouncement.

I hope what Irene did makes people think. I gained a huge amount of respect for her.

[Sioban McMahon]

Your second point about creating an alt is a very good one. In addition to having an alt to which to "escape", it's also a good idea to keep your business finances distinctly separated from your personal money/lindens. In our case, since we're a non-profit reporting to a RL organization, we need to have our charity/financial avvie so that our books can be shown to our parent organization or anyone who has questions about our in-world efforts.

[Meh]

People "leave" all the time.

[soror nishi]

Hmmm.... well I think anyone who has been an artist for many years knows that there are times in your life when you can paint/sculpt/create full-time, but then the money runs out and you need to get that stupid job to pay the rent.
I am not talking about Eshi here, just generally.
The situation is no different in SL, it is vital that people do put time and energy into their art, and few who make a living in any world from the hours they spend creating.
There is no remedy to this.
Mostly, as artists, we all work for peanuts in all worlds, and can sustain that for a while, lets all hope it is not the last we see of Eshi's great talents.

[Murky]

I second that comment "people 'leave' all the time," but we are used to giving famous people the spot light. Perhaps Eshi would have appreciated if she could have left quietly.

I have always thought about Second Life as a medium for doing things. As an artist, I know that sometimes we explore mediums and move on, we make take them again, and leave them again. The medium is worth pursuing only when it gives way to creativity.

The way I see it, Eshi had let out whatever was inside her chest and is now ready to move on. I applaud that she recognized that the time has come.

I don't think it is a loss for the Second Life community, I think there is learning here, besides she will be around.

[Kimberly Rufer-Bach]

I dislike the ongoing reinforcement of the meme that spending a lot of time in SL is bad and a sign of addiction, an unbalanced life, etc.

I used to spend every waking hour in SL or doing something related to SL -- and I only slept every third night for a few hours. Was I a saddo SL addict? A loser without a life? No . . . I was the owner of a startup company that sold SL content. And now, after a couple of years of that, I'm the owner of a more-established startup company that sells SL content, but I sleep every night unless there's some terrible deadline crunch and I have evenings and weekends off like a normal person.

Countless people in SL are starting businesses or at that tipping point between hobby and business. It's hard enough without the stigma of people assuming you're unbalanced. For a lot of us, it's not an SL thing that keeps us inworld such long hours, that makes SL so central to our lives . . . it's that we are business owners. It's the same for someone running a startup in First Life, too, you know.

Those of us who want to eventually have a Scrooge McDuck-style swim in a vat of L$ (or real ones) often have to make sacrifices, regardless of whether we do it at a brick-and-mortar office, or sitting around in our jammies driving suit-wearing avatars.

I wonder how many potentially brilliant artists, performers, builders, scripters, and other businesspeople or serious hobbyists SL has lost because of the social pressure inflicted on them to "get a real life." While Eshi's reasons are her own and it sounds as if she's making the right choice for herself, I have seen others driven from SL who really should have stuck around.

[Extropia DaSilva]

About addiction...

For anything to be classed as an addiction, it must fulfil six criteria:

Salience: The activity is the most important thing in the person's life. They spend most of their time engaged in the pursuit and think about it when doing anything else.

Mood Modification: The pursuit brings about an altered state of consciousness, such as a feeling of tranquility, or excitement. Achieving this state of mind becomes a priority.

Tolerance: The body builds up resistance to addiction, and so to achieve mood modification the person keeps increasing the dosage of the drug, or the amount of time spent engaged in the activity.

Withdrawal symptoms: Attempts to kick the habit lead to unpleasent effects like the shakes and becoming irritable.

Conflict: The pursuit adversely affects other aspects of life. Holding down jobs, keeping relationships, a general feeling that your life is out of control.

Relapse: The person may successfully kick the habit, only to find they fall back into their old addictive ways.

Only when a pursuit fulfils all six criteria can it be classed as an adiction. It is not enough simply to spend a great deal of time engaged in it.

On the other hand, if SL is foremost in your mind when you are offline, if it alters your mood but you find yourself logging on more and more often and for increasing periods of time to achieve that mood modification, if other aspects of your life are becoming adversely affected by SL, and lastly, if attempts to cut down on your time inworld lead to withdrawal symptoms...Well, then you are quite possibly addicted.