Second Job
November 15, 2007 by VJ Shojo
Help Wanted: People to work long hours for pennies and to face ridicule, criticism, and spite for your effort.
That’s how I feel like in Second Life, sometimes. Second Life is still viewed by many people as a game, I think it’s more than that, and many others see it as an immersive alternate reality, I think it’s less than that. Regardless If you spend time in SL working instead of just having fun, you know what I mean by Second Job.
I Build things in Second Life, yachts, race cars, and furniture to name a few. Building these virtual objects is much like the hobby of model railroading. Although I do sell the objects for token amounts of real money. The reward comes in being creative. Another thing I do in Second Life is DJ, or more accurately stream a two hour music show , called Groove Sunday, into SL on Sunday nights. Besides buying music to play and the software to stream into SL, the other cost to this endeavor is that I spend a couple hours putting together the program and then have the two hour commitment to actually do the show. On a good night I may make $4.00 US in tips, woo-hoo! While both of the afore mentioned examples are doing something creative and therefore can be rationalized as worthwhile. There are other jobs in SL that aren’t as rewarding.
Let me give you some advice, nver offer to manage something or to own a nightclub or music venue in SL. You will be fated to heartache and burn-out. I’ve owned and managed two music venues that bled money, time and soul from me, and I managed a race team for a friend that took hundreds of hours and lot’s of headaches and yielded very little that could justify the time and effort.
I was going to interview an owner of famous SL club that’s been around since july 2005 about how they had made their club a success when so many had failed and burned-out their owners, only to find that they are about to close their club and that they were so burnt-out on club ownership, that they didn’t want to do the interview and are thinking of leaving SL altogether. This is repeated over and over again.
What’s the answer to avoiding this syndrome? I wish I knew.
