And there, again. In spite of my attempts to work more seriously on new clothes again, I just can’t seem to get around long enough to really finish anything. I’m piling beginnings, dabblings, sketches and unfinished files, yet I never end up uploading anything. Sure, I must admit that the nice weather we’ve had these past ten days, compared to the 30 cms of snow on the ground from February and early March, aren’t making me very enthralled at the idea of spending hours in a row in front of my computer. I’m working on it, though. I’m working on it. And I’m not forgetting the people who’ve asked me for custom clothing.

Still, I managed to put a finishing touch to the third outfit in my “Four Seasons” small collection – appropriately titled Spring, but I hope that I won’t get around to finish the Summer piece by June only! Later on today, I’ll try to hang in world long enough to put it in my store and in a few other locations of mine, if not in all of them, but this remains to be seen; Easter week-end is mini-holidays for me at the other end of the country, and I still have plenty of things to prepare and/or finish at home. We’ll see.

These past two months, I haven’t been present in world the way I used to be; mostly first life-related reasons are keeping me away, and given that these reasons are good ones, I don’t intend on giving up on them. However, I am never very far, lurking on the forums, checking my IMs, and regularly sending my little feed aggregator in search of updates on blogs. It feels a bit weird, to keep an eye on all of this from “far away”; it also gives me opportunities to think about it all.

I remember the first glimpse I ever had of Second Life, through Sezmra’s review and her article and pictures about Mochastyle. I remember my very first times in Second Life, when the newbie I was remained overwhelmed by everything she was seeing around her. I remember clicking on the Top Picks of the moment, ending up in Luna, being in awe about my very first “shopping experience” in here. I remember my very first clothes – gee, were they ugly, now that I look back on this! – and how I was proud of wearing something of my own, as newbie-ish as it could seem to the eyes of more experienced players. The early entries on this blog are a good testimony of this, come to think of it; fresh and naive, should I say – or simply written from a newcomer’s point of view.

I remember poking around. Meeting in world with Sezmra. Meeting Hiro and Fey. Going to the Red Dragon market, and later on talking with Snakekiss before joining – isn’t it funny, that the group tag I wear the most often, even right now, is the one of Red Dragon Trader? In a way, I’ve never forgotten where my roots were, and I am damn proud of demn. These were nice days, indeed. I remember setting up a white wall, on the unfinished floor of my unfinished house on my First Land plot of Kafiri, to take screenshots of my first yukata. I remember Sophos Casanova’s big house, towering above mine, and how the landscape suddenly looked so bare when he took it down. I remember the first malls I visited, the first vending booths I had, notably in Ebisu Events center, before I even moved there.

There were the parties that I shyly started attending, the first one being at Aurora’s in Varney, before she sold her land there, then going to the Fantasy Castle, and later on poking at Club Elite and the Edge simply to see how it was there, and because it was fun, for a time, to do these things in the morning for a bit, before setting myself to work. The old Shelter crew was a pretty welcoming and funny one, and the Outback people were the ones I’d meet when it was noon here and nobody else was on. I remember trying bingo, to which I was addicted for quite some time, Miru Airport and Germaine’s famous Bingoland Park. This wasn’t that long ago, only three or four months, and yet, it seems like an eternity. Like much water has flown under the bridge, as we say here. There’s a perfume of nostalgia floating over all of this; still, I know it’s not over. Far from being over, actually.

I feel so restless about this. I would like to do so much more, attend so many things, but I also know that if I do it now, before I am properly settled in my new lifestyle, I will regret it. So I keep watching, I keep waiting. I pop in here and there, for a few minutes or a whole hour. I spend this hour either exploring or talking with friends, which feels already nice enough for me. The tugging is still here, though, calling me to do “more”. One day, I will. One day.

For the moment, I am watching, and keeping the memories alive.