Tuesday 29 January 2013

Raza in Bladerunner City 29/01/2013

Visiting Bladerunner City SIM:
bit.ly/WqqIAq

Wearing Graves Black & White Male Space/ Cat suit:
bit.ly/WcY6eO

Tuesday 28 August 2012

Sex Beach

It has been a while since I posted anything on this blog, but as hectic and busy as RL has been I have managed to find some time to log into Second Life and take my mind off RL problems by immersing myself in the relaxing and re-energizing pastime that is Virtual Sex.

It may sound crass but I find having sex in Second Life very therapeutic and stimulating, It is not like sex in real life, and as with other Second Life experiences it should be taken on its own merits and not compared to it's real life equivalent. It is an immersive experience that one can share with someone else, or more than on person, and it takes your mind to another place entirely. I find that the setting that virtual sex takes place in affects it's ability to transport your mind, thoughts and feelings to another more immersive and exotic place. This is why I suggested going to a sex beach, as opposed to just another sky box, when it came to taking the virtual sex voyage with a good SL friend of mine, Ginseng Salamander, a few days ago.

A random search in the Second Life viewer destination guide and we found ourselves in the wonderful Sapphire Sex Beach, which is beautifully crafted and provides breathtaking scenery to act as a backdrop to what was a truly stimulating time in the reality escape vehicle that is Second Life. It made my day and helps me get through the mundane drudgery of real life. Enjoy some of th epics below, more on flickr!

Let me know how you feel about your virtual sex experiences in second life, I'd love to hear about them!






Tuesday 6 September 2011

When it Rains

We didn't have much of a summer here in London, England. I think there were about 8 hot and sunny days in all, over the last 5 months. All my well organised, boy toy BBQ implements only saw the light of day 3 times and as September rolled into my life there was a false hope of a day where the heat was scorching and I managed to enjoy drinking a rare Italian beer on the outdoor riverside terrace of the Royal Festival Hall in South Bank. The next day it started raining heavily and hasn't really stopped since.

Elmore Leonard says one should never start a book with the weather, but as I hear the raindrops splutter form my blocked up guttering and stare at the dank, grey moody clouds I can't help but be affected by the dreary weather.

It's not that I am feeling low. Far from it. I have little reason to be grey inside, my ongoing inner turmoil and psychological rebirth aside. I am focussing on my career change from disaffected finance analyst to enthusiastic trainee web designer/ developer. I am passing the test on my Dreamweaver web design course without issue. I am all warm and snug inside my cosy suburban weather shack. No, it's something else i feel inside. Not low, but eerily middle of the road. Lacking in vital, youthful energy. There is no spring in my step. There is only a mushy autumn trudge. It is hindering my progress on the course and my enjoyment of this rare time in my life when I have the chance to focus on growing myself and overcoming my inner psychological issues and getting into a career that will actually fulfil me. Yet when it is so grey and drizzly outside I feel as if everything I do has lost a bit of it's charm. Sweet things taste a little less sweet. I am enjoying everything a little bit less.

I feel I need a big dose of Second Life back in my life. I have seen very little of my Real Life friends and barley anything of my second life friends for ages. I do feel disconnected form all of the little communities I am a part of. Many of those communities and people, in real life at least, I don't really like, and have never felt connected to. I just ended up in them due to circumstances out of my control. I used to follow what my parents and society told me to do, and end up living lives that other people thought best for me, even though inside I felt a fraud. I would wake up every day wondering who I should  be today. How should I act. Obviously not my true self as that person was an immature, naive fool. I developed layers of sophisticated façades to cover my inherent low self esteem and ended up assuming I really was as confident and happy as i acted. I wasn't, and when it all blew up in my face I found myself having to star again. In many ways trying to find my true self, and my true identity, who I  really am and where  I fit in the big scheme of things is what most people do as teenagers. I'm 32 years old and should be well beyond that now. Continual growth is all well and good but starting over, as if from scratch (although I'm not really starting just form scratch, though it feels that way much of the time) is even harder at 32 than 13.

One way I have tried to start again is by re-connecting with the world outside me. Sure I connect with it on the intellectual and information level by reading articles on the net and watching TV but that's not real connection. I need to re-connect with people, both real and virtual, friends old and new, yet fear holds me back. Fear of being thought of as a fool, fear of embarrassing myself, fear of rejection or offending people. I need to overcome my fears and go out into the world in a more pro-active manner. Trouble is it keeps raining and I don;t like getting wet, physically or metaphorically.

Maybe my journey back into society will begin in the virtual realm, where I can build up my confidence, and then return to the outside world, rain or no rain.





Thursday 31 March 2011

Rua_006


Rua_006, originally uploaded by Raza Lane.

Immersed in the exotic beauty of the Underwater Gardens of Rua in secondlife

Monday 7 February 2011

Why Don’t I Blog more?

There are so many thoughts buzzing around my hyperactive mind that it is hard to channel them into coherent narratives that make for interesting and enlightening blog posts. This is the main barrier I face when challenging myself to blog more.

As I try to type up the reflections I conjure up in reaction to events that happen to me or are happening in the outside world, I am constantly jumping over inner self created hurdles. In the end I am left exhausted by the whole process and I digress so far from the main point of the blog post that my prose is nothing but an incoherent stream of nonsense. If I am to compose concise, succinct and insightful blog posts that are fun to read and connect with even one person out there in cyberspace then I have to overcome my inner confusion, the misty clouds of noise that break up my initially focussed thoughts. I am essentially need to learn how to believe in myself, now what I really believe in, accept that what I am saying may not be popular with those around me, or even those I love, but that this is how I feel and think at this moment and therefore I will put fingers to keyboard and post my true inner thoughts and leave a trace of myself on the blogosphere for time to judge. That is easier said than done, and the amount of effort it takes just to think straight is why I end up starting blog posts, but never completing them, and therefore never posting them. I also dislike the boring activity of editing, which takes me ages as I type as fast as I talk and leave a trial of spelling destruction behind me.

Going back to the source of my inability to focus and stick to the point, I have always allowed external forces to influence me far more than is good for me. These wide range of forces exert far too much power over the direction my life ends up taking. I am currently in the process of riding an emotional rollercoaster, as I try to unpick the source of my life’s misdirection. Why do I always ending up taking jobs I hate and doing things I loathe instead of focussing my energies on activities that fulfil me and that I feel passionate about? I am sure that this is a question many people ask themselves constantly in life. I tend to run away from asking myself this, and it only pops up after many weeks of forced suppression fail to quell that constant need for an answer.

I always use the excuse that I don’t have enough time, and whilst that is true in many respects, the reason I have no time to develop the true side of me and follow my passions is that I waste time on fulfilling responsibilities that I feel I should be carrying out. Whether or not I really should be doing these things, which are usually for the benefit of other people and institutions, is something I have never really deeply challenged. I only started recently, after years of therapy finally clicked in my little head and made me realise one of the sources of my inability to succeed in leading a more fulfilled and stable life, dedicated to the pursuits I feel passionate about.

Trying to live one’s “truth” is always a challenge, but it helps to at least realise this is an important path to be on and that one has to find out one’s truth rather than build up a false personality. That is basically being the person you think everyone else wants you to be, which is how I have lived most of my life so far.

There are many diverse and often conflicting external forces controlling me. These range from the voice of my father from my youth, my extended family, my current family, an increasingly alienating, materialistic, capitalist consumer society, my more ruthless, materialistic, shallow and greedy “friends”/ peers, a patriarchal, traditional, communal and confused “culture” as my background, and the voices of those people I work with as a finance analyst/ accountant, people whom I don’t really relate to or engage with and who have a very different, more black and white world view than I do. All these voices/ forces and more enter into my conscious being and are absorbed by my anxiety ridden and insecure soul. They battle with my natural inner feelings that are more independent minded and less rigid. When I want nothing more than to escape to a forest by the stream they tell me to hop onto a crowded old commuter train, wearing a suit that strangles me into claustrophobia and sit behind a gamma ray emitting PC screen crunching numbers to make evil corporations richer at the expense of honest, hard working people. Anyone who tries to buck the trend or live a different type of life is seen as eccentric and an outcast. That is how I see it, but of course that is not true, even in a world without objective truth. Yet the fact I struggle to escape the voices and ideas of other people on a daily basis makes composing blog posts that are true to my heart an emotionally draining experience at times,. However, it is one that I feel is worth it, as in the end it will help me understand myself, my true self, and the true forces working on me better. It should hopefully also help me learn to type more effectively and learn to spell for once!

Hopefully my next blog post will be less psychologically intense, sillier and light hearted.

Tuesday 1 February 2011

Second Life Exploration

I need to be more organised about exploring Second Life and all the diverse SIMs out there, as I get easily distracted and end up spending the precious time I am inworld in the same SIM just wasting time when I could be running through virtual meadows or cutting through virtual jungles.

In order to introduce some method into my time wasting madness I have decided to list the places I want to visit on this blog so I have one consistent place where I log the SLurls of places a variety of people and websites recommend are worth visiting in SL.

If you have any suggestions for cool and exotic places to visit in SL please let me know as I am always on the look out for new places to explore.

SL has so much creativity to offer and I don't want to miss out.

the list so far:

  • The Forest

    ~ The Forest ~ A Peaceful and Beautiful place to wander an entire sim of just tranquil forest rivers lakes and animals...very romantic. Dance under the Stars, Explore, Relax and have a dream, cuddle and kiss. Find like minded Spirits or just walk with wildlife and reflect on nature. Dance in the Rain. Category: Hotspot Contact Avatar: Pluto Fairey Activities: Explorer
http://slurl.com/secondlife/City%20of%20Rio/138/233/148/?title=The%20Forest

  • Twomoons Island
Nearby, yet invisible from Earth, thrives the volcanic Twomoons Island...a destination for weary teleporters. Enjoy fantastic nature and night skies. Indulge in shopping for men and women or your home and garden. Look for the art gallery or seek to find hidden coves and interactive objects.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Twomoons%20Island/138/104/33

Pics to follow!