Starting out, and looking for Shelter

A month ago, I stepped into Second Life for the first time. I didn’t know what to expect, and for my first few visits, over the course of several days, I wandered around more or less bewildered, just trying basic interactions with objects and occasionally chatting with people. I’m apparently just as quiet in SL as I am in my First Life. Just like in my first life, I don’t mean to be withdrawn; it just takes me a while to come out of my shell when I’m in new surroundings.

As I tend to do in my First Life (or “Real Life,” “RL,” as most seem to refer to it), without thinking, I started looking for a place to return to, somewhere to anchor myself, somewhere I could hope and reasonably expect to find friendly people. I found that at The Shelter. There, more than anywhere else I’ve visited yet, I could hope and expect to find friendly, interesting, and intelligent people when I dropped by.

Last week, though, I dropped by The Shelter several times and didn’t find the people I hoped to find there. Practically none of them, in fact. And Travis, the fellow who (so far as I could tell) runs the place and is pretty much a beacon of hospitality, was nowhere to be found. The Shelter was still well-populated, but mostly by people in their first or second day of their Second Lives, and without Travis or the others I’d come to think of as the “regulars” or “hosts” there to guide the new folks and set the tone, well, let’s just say that the quality of the conversation and overall pleasantness of the Sheltered experience were considerably diminished.

I was dismayed. I overheard that Travis was preoccupied by events in RL, but that was all anyone there mentioned. Obviously something else was going on because all the people I hoped to see had disappeared, but as someone new to SL I didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone about it out of the blue in IM, and I had no idea where they were in person. I could only guess that some kind of drama had come to pass of which I was completely unaware.

I spent most of the week wandering around SL, getting some more skydiving in, doing a bit of shopping (I’ve been slow to figure out how my avatar is going to dress), and visiting the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives to start to learn to build. But I was still disappointed, because there seemed to be no point to starting out and ending my time in SL at The Shelter.

Then, on Friday night, I went to a Frogg & Jaycatt show and saw several of the people I’d missed seeing all week. I was still too shy to ask where they’d disappeared to, but I noticed they shared a new group title. Searching that, I found my way to The Shelter in Exile, in Swinside.

Apparently there has indeed been some sort of falling out among Sheltered folks. At first, I was curious to know what happened, but people at The Shelter in Exile were obviously still hurt and avoided direct discussion about it. I learned just that there was a falling out and everyone hopes to be back in The Shelter in Isabel soon.

After witnessing a few awkward conversations it occurred to me that it doesn’t really matter to me what happened. What matters to me is that I’ve again found the people whose company I enjoy, people I hope to get to know better as time goes on. I’ve spent enough time at The Shelter in the last month that when I think of “The Shelter,” I think of these people, not the place. So, as long as they’ll have me, I’ll go where they go.

Like everyone else, I hope good times will come again for The Shelter in Isabel. Until then, you’ll find me in Swinside with the word “Exile” over my head.