Since I've been back, life has proven to be very different to what I've been doing for the last year. It feels weird having an empty-ish calendar, with no meetings and no deadlines. For the past month, I've been living the fresh graduate's life - where the only responsibilities I've given myself is to job hunt and make sure I never miss the morning edition of the Tyra show.
Despite my relatively free and easy schedule, I'll be the first to admit that it hasn't all been a piece of cake. Job hunting, for instance, is sooo incredibly frustrating. Although there are a multitude of jobs out there for someone like me, it all seems to come down to whether the position - and me - are a good fit. I'm sure there are plenty of jobs out there I could do, but at the end of the day, I want to reserve the right to be incredibly picky, and I should be able to! I worked my butt off to get my degrees, so I should be allowed to use the equal amount of energy (and discrepancy) to find the place that is purrrrfect for me. The last thing I want, is to start work in a horrible place, that will leave me disillusioned and fed up at the end of the working week :(
So in the meantime, between sending out applications and brown-nosing potential employers, I've rediscovered the strange wonders of a semi-magical place called Second Life (SL).
SL is a virtual community that is pretty similar to The Sims, except apart from creating your own virtual character, users can participate in online businesses, buy virtual houses using REAL currencies...you can even do the NASTY (meow) if you dare to :p The lengths some people will go to with their virtual identity can be pretty strange! (More on that X-rated stuff another time...)
Through credit card or online payments, you can use your real-life hard earned savings to buy land, property, clothing, skins, ridiculously enlarged body parts (wink wink) that are all essentially intangible! The even freakier part is, many SL-ers take incredible pride in their latest purchases, or how they've decorated their multiple animated houses. I have never bought or spent precious money on anything like that online. I guess the only reason I go on every now and then is out of pure boredom. It can be a very amusing way to kill time, especially when you start to wonder what sort of people do this on a regular basis. What are their motivations? Are they trying to escape the real world, or do they get a kick outta snooping around just like me...? The saddest thing is, there are so many middle-aged married people there, basically doing...nothing. It makes me wonder if after a certain age, married life really is that dull.
I used to think SL was a temporary trend, for a bunch of geeks with nothing better to do. But a few days ago, I read that a host of international companies including Dell, Toyota, and Adidas all have a presence in this cult virtual world - using it as a promotional tool. There are even jobs out there for marketers who want to work full-time on SL promoting different brands and products! With over 3 million users registered with Second Life, its no wonder Tourism Australia, the Swedish Govt., even Telstra are all testing the waters there.
