Goal complete, the firewood is stacked and seasoned.  Leaves are falling and the cedars have begun to drop some of their greenery and it covers the ground in a latticework of light brown against the darkened earth that has otherwise been stripped of the brambles and brush this summer in preparation for the springtime and green grass next year.  Winter is just around the corner and the preparations for it are paying off.

I find that with a busy schedule outside of the home, I try to set a goal of doing one thing each day with the time I have at home.  It doesn’t mean that the thing has to be a big thing, just something.  Everyday, I make it a point to complete some thing that I set out to do and once it’s complete, I savor the moment, even if it’s just for a minute.  Lately, it’s been goals of “house tuning” you might say.  Opening a particular box from a move that hasn’t been gone through yet and sorting out what’s inside or repairing something around the house or fixing equipment used to maintain the house and yard.  Sometimes it’s a simple matter of gathering a load of who knows what to give away or dispose of.

This year was busy with a really big move and sale of a house and all the activities that come with finalizing the sale of said house.  It’s one thing to move as a college student or young person with few possessions but to have amassed a lifetime of trappings that you must move and sort, well that’s a different story.

It felt like the goal of prepping the house, moving, selling the house and meeting needs at the new house was never going to end and there were a few times that I just wanted to walk away from all of it.  The problem was that the poorly defined goal was one big massive list that just kept getting added to.  In the business world they call it “Scope Creep” and it means that the Scope of Work spreads out beyond the original plan.  In my case the goal or scope of work had never really been clearly defined and it kept growing with no end in sight.  That kind of situation can lead to stress because you loose focus without a clear goal.  That’s when you want walk away, unsuccessful and feeling defeated.

At some point, there was a realization that a lot of goals had been reached and few had been recognized and even less had been celebrated.  It was at that time when I understood that many small defined and accomplished goals are better than one giant ball of undefined murkiness that has no apparent end.  It was at that time when getting one thing completed at a time as had already been happening but also savoring the victory no matter how small, came into play.  Since that time it’s been far easier look back and see the accomplishments and recognize just how much has been done.

Break your goals down into sizable portions, recognize completions and celebrate that victory…repeat.

It’s been a long time since I have had to strategize about paying bills.  I have been nearly debt free for a while now and I can tell you that life is in fact,  different.  You don’t lose sleep thinking about that next payment you must make and in general, life is simpler without debt.  Surprisingly, I have a little more time for other things now.
The next big ongoing push for improvement has been to make life easier by minimizing the amount of material goods I do not want waste my time managing anymore.  I find that a mountain of collected unused crap takes up space, personal energy and time managing said crap.
It’s not to say a completely empty life is best, but focusing on the basics of what you really need can really be the next step in being free.

Many years ago, I logged into an online world and began building an alternate life as a way to pass some time.  It became a place to escape the real world and create an alternate and better one.  This place isn’t a mission based world place but rather a place where you can do just about anything you can imagine.  Your only limitations are skill.

In that place, I found solace during a point in my life where my real life was less than ideal.  I didn’t realize it at the time but I was not dealing well with my real life and this became part of normal daily life and logging out was more like leaving what had begun to feel like reality.  In short, it became more real life and real life became more second life.  I got a little lost in it, knew it and didn’t care.

Fast forward many years later.  I hadn’t logged on in several years but my avatar was still on the server and it was as if I had just logged out for a day or two rather than years.  During my time in the past in there I had made friends, built a house on land, found a significant other and once met them in real life, had a fantastic time and stayed in touch for years after.  It seemed rather normal to me and the lines between reality and digital at the time were quite blurred.

Recently, I went back to a small town where I once lived.  It was so much like I had remembered but had changed a lot too.  A visit to the gravesite of my grandparents and great grandparents was just a bit too surreal.  I went back to the house my grandparents lived in and the memories were still there but the most important parts were missing…the people.   Things were certainly not the same by any means either.  It was a step back in time without the people I once knew that made up that point in my history.

Back to the digital experience of today…My new job involves online games and online gameplay. It’s part of the culture at work to find staff logged into a game world in one place or another and my choice was to log back onto the old world where I had once built a digital life.

The experience was a bit odd because I could see who had released me as a friend…much in the same we do in real life, they had let go and moved on…they have to.  It’s part of the human condition.  It’s part of what makes us, well, human.

I wandered around looking for a few old places where I had been before and had made those long time past friends.  Many of the places had been updated so much that they weren’t even near what they once were, changed or deleted so much that I didn’t recognize them at all.  It was as if I had died years ago and was back as a ghost only to see that what I once knew was forever changed.  In reality, it was changed and the truth is that it would be near impossible for that world to stay the same or even to be recreated it as the same as it once was.  It’s a digital rendition of real life and it’s never going to be the same as it ever was.  It can’t be and that is just based on the odds of people restoring every single data bit back to the way it was on all the servers at a time from the past.

I found pictures I had taken in there and they were the only reminders that really looked familiar at all.  Well that and the way I had dressed my avatar so long ago.  He hasn’t aged but certainly does look his age because of the ready made new designs offered to the new members.

I did find one place that the founder had given to another member and the founder either died in real life or had simply lost interest in the place they had built.  It still had much of the old feel that I remembered and I wanted to stay but there were no people there so I left.  The empty was too painful.  To many, the experiences I had probably seem strange but when you connect with people, the media you use doesn’t really matter.  Look at the way the world reacts when a publicly loved famous person presented by the media dies.  People feel it and react.

Logging back into Second Life after being away was a lonely experience because all the people I knew were no where to be found.  I have heard it said that there seems to be a “lifespan” for people there and I am beginning to understand why.  I’m not sure I would want to return once I had reached the point of feeling like the life I built around friends had been removed.  I also can now understand why sometimes older people in life might have similar feelings once they have been sidelined for a long enough time that the people in their lives are gone or have forgotten them.  Real Life changes at a steady pace and it’s important to stay involved and not get sidelined.

Find new things to do, explore, don’t stop living, always make new friends.  Don’t get sidelined and forgotten, do something good that leaves a mark on the world for the better.