Happy Rezday to Me

It's not my first Rezday until 1st November but I'm writing about it now just in case I forget. There's going to be no big party; no fanfare; no fireworks. On reflection, it's almost tragic that after a year of Second Life I don't appear to have a circle of friend with whom to celebrate! Sure I have people on my "Friends List" but unlike the regular notion of "friends," I don't believe any of them either know nor care about my Rezday.

Of course, the question is; do I know and care about other people's Rezdays? The only ones I would make an effort to say "Happy Rezday" to would be Mony and Merry and Willa. And even then, I think I've missed Willa's already.

So I shall have a quite Rezday, letting it slip past anonymously. Maybe this is not a bad thing. After a year of making no real friends, perhaps that can be an advantage for a journalist. Perhaps I can leverage the "splendid isolation" to become much more aggressive. Perhaps I don't need friends but do need to decide whether I want to be liked or appreciated. So what if I write a few stories that cause a fuss - what does that matter? What if I do go on the offensive and start openly criticising the SL Press as being, in the main, nothing but pretend journalism focused on trivia and advertising? How many friends will I lose? None!

Of course, I could find that no-one ever hires me to write a story ever again, but then I could just go ahead and do what other folks do - start my own paper: The Leominster Times. Provided I don't get kicked out of the Associated SL Press group, I could gather together a small (probably very small) group of disaffected writers who want to do something different.

Or maybe the Herald and SLentrepreneur will keep the faith and let me continue to write. I don't intend to become a miserable, nasty hack just for the sake of being that way; I just want to be able to be more critical. I know I offended Angelico Babii when I used the word "moribund" to describe the "My Metaverse" social network site two months ago but that wasn't intentional, simply an observation. And the last blog posting there no turns out to be by me on 9th October, preceded by Isadora Fiddlesticks announcing the launch of Avenue Magazine, another "ads and amigos" magazine. Incidentally - or not - Fiddlesticks previously edited HodgePodge magazine, a "lifestyle" magazine that folded after just under a year; possible because it drowned under the weight of Isadora's over-use of exclamation points! I swear, in one paragraph containing three sentences she used three exclamations. Hey, try a period or even a comma and give the !! a rest.

So if I actually get in-world on 1st November - and it's a Saturday so during the afternoon I have time - I'll go search for a sad-looking cake, a lonely bottle of cognac, set it on my empty table, and sing a flat "Happy Rezday to Me" before logging off and drinking myself stupid.

Bah, humbug!