She was never bored, because she was never boring

I know it looks a bit like I’m editing appearance.. but I’m actually doing a little yoga.

My friend, and up and coming blog media superstar, Yordie Sands (you go girl!) posted this on Facebook and literally opened a valve inside me about something I’ve wanted to write about for a long time.

If I had a linden for every time someone responded with “I’m bored” when I asked how they are doing in Second Life, well… you know the punchline. How boring of them! And that’s only the half of it. The worst, honestly, is when someone IMs me with the message: “I’m bored.” What am I supposed to say to that? Next time it happens I might just suggest they blink wildly and then close their eyes really tight for an interesting light show, or try not to think about penguins, or maybe make Star Trek door noises, or… truly, the self-amusement potential is remarkably endless.

Samuel Johnson once wrote

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

I think the same thing could be easily said of Second Life. The Pet Shop Boys tell us that they were never “being boring” so therefore never “being bored”. I’ve thought for a long time that the only people who find themselves “being bored” are those with very little access to their imagination. I don’t believe anyone has no imagination, but rather that they just haven’t been very successful at creating pathways to use the imaginative part of their brain. I love this tune, the lyrics and the video… yummmmmmm….. they all remind me so much of SL too! And, definitely, absolutely, positively, not boring!

Due to my chosen work in Second Life, I have a very active engagement profile, interacting with sometimes over 50 people a day – whether they be in Second Life, on my Facebook profile, on my club’s Facebook Page and website, on Twitter, and on YouTube. But that didn’t happen by accident, I made it happen, in Second Life and on Social Media.

And that may be part of it… the proactive engagement of making your life interesting to yourself. “Here we are now, entertain us” just doesn’t work for me.

I also happily spend loads of time analysing and interpreting my club’s business metrics. To many people, it may seem baffling that I’d be interested in such a thing, but I actually find it very stimulating.

I love to discover the behavioural patterns that can be revealed by numbers. For the over 60 dancers that work for me, I love to see the amount of time people spend working, when they work, how often they work, how much they earn, and whom they earn it from. This will often help me understand why they work, which helps me understand how to better motivate them. I also love to see tipper patterns: how, who, what, and when they tip all help to reveal the answers to the most important question: Why they tip. And when you can balance that equation, the sparks can really start to fly!

I also have lots of outside pursuits beyond the business I love to run, which often end up somewhere on this blog.

I also love shopping for clothes and household stuff both in world and on the Marketplace, updating my Pinterest with all the gorgeous things that are being produced on an almost daily basis from SL designers, and reading fashion blogs (I really should put a list of my favourites together!).

One of my latest endeavors involve getting through my list of places I want to visit (a long and growing list I should also post on here as a page!). On it I have too many things to visit and explore, including:

• Art Galleries
• SL Historical Places and Museums
• Natural wonder replicas
• Historically themed sims
• Built structures that range from the realistic to the fantastic
• Scuba Parks!
• Music venues for live music
• Performance art in world

I spent weeks developing my underwater park, which was an all-consuming labour-of-love, and an homage to my Dad’s lifelong interest in marine life.

I’ve spent hours creating playlists for my DJ sets (more stuff to post – maybe even through Spotify) and writing poetry and prose that related to my experiences in SL.

I love to dream up future business ideas and discuss them with my friends – especially people who really, really get it and that I feel have so much to teach me about business and entrepreneurship.

I love to get my photo taken and I love taking photos too (O.M.G. don’t get me started on fiddling with Windlight Settings) and editing them in PicMonkey and other image editing programs.

I’ve recently discovered how to making videos with Screenflow and iMovie (and sometimes a little Garage Band).

And, of course, I just love lounging with friends, old and new, at the club or out of it, from in and outside of work, just having amazing eclectic conversations with more people from different places and walks of life than I could ever possibly muster in the same amount of time in RL.

Even alone-time can be really fun if you know how to use it! Just last night, I just wanted to spend a little time doing my own thing, so I assembled over 40 outfits in my lingerie collection – and just had a great time exploring my inventory to better coordinate my lingerie into outfits, mixing things up with jewellery, body art, hair, and makeup. While sorting the outfits I was also testing out a new pose chair I bought from Diesel Works, with 23 poses – just imagine the permutations of 40 outfits and 23 poses!! It’s endless! (Well, 940 permutations, at least!)

So, I’m always surprised, and a little bit disappointed, when I ask someone how they are doing in Second Life, and they reply “I’m bored”… I know, I know, you can’t be stimulated 100% of the time. I get it, I really do… but “bored”? Seriously?

In a world with so much possibility, how can one possibly be bored??? And if anyone out there is really, really that bored, IM me in world (Canary Beck)… because I could probably delegate about 100 tasks to you to keep you blissfully occupied for weeks! 🙂