[VIRTUAL/INSANITY] SL

Being a designer in Second Life is a never ending story.
When an event is over, another is starting.
When a hunt is done, another is coming.

During the past 2 years and a half, I've been working like we would work in Real Life on my personal project.

That's an everyday work from monday to sunday, at least 12 hours a day, including a lot of tasks : building, texturing, taking pictures, making posters, setting up vendors, setting up stores, remaking a full sim, working on a mall, organizing events, setting up split scripts, scripting, participating to events and work on a theme, making the advertising, holding a blog, social networking, answering customer service questions, answering to XYZ demand from anyone, answering different mall invitations, finding mall space, waiting that people answer, waiting that people answer, waiting that people answer, getting tons of IMs.

Every single designer in Second Life who's quite active in the fashion world knows what I'm talking about.

During these two years and a half, I took 2 weeks of holidays and had about a month on hiatus due to some serious RL reasons.

Today, I am facing again a serious, overwhelming, exhausting RL issue that needs me to take distance with Second Life.
It doesn't mean that I will be closing the store, stopping events, stopping to release stuff, etc.

What it means is that, for CLINICAL reasons, I need to take care of my health at first and to avoid stress & fatigue.
I can't work like a headless chicken anymore.
I am living at the moment in a brain fog. This means that I can't concentrate on things and tasks that a random healthy person would find very easy to do.
It also means that I forget a lot of things, even if I just did it.
It is making me feel guilty, it is stressing me out and making me work even more in a bad way. This is a negative circle and I have to get out of it. No one wants to see me calling "Zombie Popcorn", "Zombie Cop Porn". Well, with what I'm facing now, that could happen.

There are therefore stuff I'll can't handle in the next few weeks :

• Reading 20+ lines notecards.
That can sound lazy but the brain fog is a reason to it and my uncurable myopia is also a reason. Eyes issues get more intense with stress & at the moment, I go cross eyes while reading a 10 lines text. I'll make the effort to read a bit more but please, if you write to me, do it simple.

• Working on details & sharp stuff.
For the same reasons, I can't concentrate at the moment so this would be a very bad idea to ask me to work on details. If something is NOT mandatory, it will not be done or reported to later.

• Answering tons of IMs.
Whether I'm online or not, I really can't handle to receive customers IMs. We have a CSR for that and the name is on my profile since months. Even more now, I will NOT answer to customers IMs.
This is the same thing for events organizers, mall owners & bloggers I'm not used to work with. The CSR will take your notecards and if we're interested, we'll warn you.
People we are USED to work with (events, malls, bloggers) are free to IM but please, don't be too demanding.
About friends now, I'm removing my online status to 90% of my list. I'm keeping the ones that need to see me online. If I appear offline to you, that doesn't mean that I don't like you but that at the moment, I can't handle having conversations with you. The 10% remaining are people that NEED to contact me on a daily basis or often : my estate manager, my assistants, my closest people (daily basis), my events organizers, my malls owners, my own sim's designers, ...
If you still NEED to contact me, please notecard me.
I don't want to receive IMs asking me why I'm removing the online status. This is NOT a personal thing. If you take it this way, then I'll take as a personal thing to remove you. No need for soap operas atm.

• Handling other people's stress.
I have enough of mine. Some people on Second Life are extremely demanding and forget that we just are human beings with the same problems, needs, lack of time. If I have to face demanding people at the moment, I will not be patient.

Now here is what I will do :

• I'll only work between 1AM SLT & 8AM SLT.
Means that notercards will be answered at that time, building work, events work & stuff will be handled at that time. Not before, no later.

• I'll only work during the week.
Several studies show that people who work 10 hours a day once per week develop high stress level that can lead to different sicknesses. Working 12 hours a day on a 7 days basis is suicide. So I'm stopping that now.

• I'll keep on building.
Building is a creative outlet & not a work. So I'll keep on building but at my own rythm.


• I'll lower on events.
I have three hunts yet for october. It's ENOUGH. It means that I can't handle more. It will be Halloween soon and tons of events will happen. I'll can't handle that. Last XMAS, I had about 8 hunts going on. It was OVERWHELMING. I'll not work this way anymore.

• I'll be on SL to do other stuff.
You'll prolly see me online. I'll probably be AFK often or taking care of other things. So seeing me online doesn't mean that I'm working, no. But that doesn't mean either that I can handle conversations.

• I'll not explain the why inworld.
No, I won't. That means that for any question about this, I'll throw you the link to this blog post.

I hope that everyone will get this.
This is just a matter of physical limits.
I'd rather lower now than in 2 months having to close the store cos I wasn't able to handle the stress.
Thanks for understanding.

Lovi