Happy Thursday - RL into SL

Happy Thursday late again. If you don't like to read about RL, stop right here.

What makes me happy? Second Life makes me happy.

In many ways really, but this post is about the break from real life, the relaxation and autoimmunity it offers.

One of my co-workers looked at me yesterday and said "I'm not under the stress you are" It surprised me to hear that from a man with a young child, a not great heart, and a wife with that brings home more money than he does and pressures him to go to college so he can get out of what he enjoys and make more money. However he was talking about our responsibilities at work. He's the buyer for the home decor department and consults on fashion fabric purchases.

I'm the manager and buyer for the largest, most active department. I control about 1/3 of the shop which contains oh, 6 or 7 departments, most of which have sub-categories. As buyer I work with ten fabric reps handling 40 manufacturers.

What attracted his attention? I was involved in my detailed analytical approach to buying which is accompanied by some gut reactions. Trying to decide which pieces of fabric from which lines from a particular manufacturer to buy for the shop. Which would my customers want? which were groups likely to be featured in magazines or regional classes/workshops, and if they were, which prints would be used in the project? And if they weren't, which groups or prints in the group would sell/be in demand regardless?

I have a regional reputation in a small vertical market. my guess is about 3,000-4,000 people in the immediate area; not that all of them know me or know of me. But enough walk in the door with my name on their lips. He calls them Cas's Groupies. During the one of the big national shows each year, I hear a little song "It's Casie's time, it's Casie's time" and believe me when I say the other managers get burnt out with it being "all about Cas". I am always deep down grateful when it's over and work settles down again.

I could go on in this vein for a while such as a round of applause just because I went to a birthday bash for an instructor last week. Weeoou what did I do?? I'm just me, nothing special. I'm so glad I'm in a nitch market. I don't know how regional TV personalities handle it.

This is one post I probably should delete, because I don't want to give the wrong impression. This really isn't a swelled head trying for attention even though it may sound that way. This is RL background to show you why when I get home I enjoy escaping into a world where no one knows my name. No one looks me up and down and says "So you're the famous Cas".

Maybe that's why I've never managed to do anything worthwhile in SL. No designing, no art, nothing creative, not even a fashion blog. Time away from work is not all time in SL - I do projects, I visit friends weekly, I exercise almost every day. However SL is my escape, my freedom, my social outlet when my work schedule prohibits me from attending activities with the RL groups I'm in.


I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog

- Emily Dickinson

I've had this poem memorized since high school.