Going sXe on Second Life

Well, I'm back to blogging again, and Second Life is gone from my real life for about one more week. I've been gaining back some balance with my life ever since I started my break from it, but I can't stay away for long. I mean, I co-own a punk club on there--and that means that I have to make decisions, make sure djs show up and do their sets, hire more djs, look for hosts and hostesses to hire, set up shop underneath the building (the club is up in the air, in a "skybox"--easily defined as a building designed to be suspended in the air), create products to sell, buy a rent-a-stall system, set that up, set up the vendor system I bought not too long ago, and do some djing myself. At the same time, I have to manage my real life (the life people NOT in-the-know commonly refer to as "first life"), and NOT fail out of classes. Plus, there are some bills to pay, some meds to refill, etc, etc. Hygiene wasn't taken care of, and neither was my dorm room--it was a disaster area! :O Plus, due to my addiction to SL, I had been missing classes......

But this is no longer: I had allowed the coordinator and transition specialist of the College Program for Students with Asperger's to hold on to my computer monitor for at least a week, or until I start getting a grip on my real life. After adjusting to finding other things to do in the evenings, I also had started going to bed earlier, adjusting back to functioning in the local time zone, rather than the time zone in the game known as Second Life Time (really, the US Pacific Time Zone, where the company that runs Second Life is located). However, I learned that going to bed earlier than normal has been fail for me at the very least, but I'll probably get better at it as time passes. In the meantime, I'm still looking for social events to attend, I'm cleaning myself up, losing weight by going to the recreation center (still cool!), taking more showers, etc. In a way, I'm going straight edge on SL, abstaining from it, but only briefly.

Now, I understand that there are people out there who are screaming at me while reading this post: "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? STRAIGHT EDGE IS A MOVEMENT FULL OF PEOPLE USING VIOLENCE TO GET YOU TO ABSTAIN FROM DRUGS, SMOKING, ALCOHOL, AND SECKS! AND TO GET YOU TO BECOME A TREE-HUGGING, FUR-HATING VEGAN HIPPIE HICK!" Unfortunately, for those people, they are wrong. The ideals are right, but the perspective is wrong.

This movement is really a grassroots movement, a positive subculture within the punk culture. In fact, you can claim to be straight edge if you follow certain guidelines:

1. don't drink
2. don't do drugs/smoke
3. don't fuck

That's basically it. (And when I say fuck, I meant casual/pre-marital sex. Pardon my launguage, as well!) Other than that, how much further you can go varies with each straight edger. I mean, yes, there are vegan straight edgers, but that doesn't mean that all sXers ("sXe" is the abbreviation for "straight edge") are supposed to be vegan; it just means that being sXe means something more to these people than the people who AREN'T vegan.



The only problem with this movement is the light that public sees this movement in: many vigilante sXers (known as "hard liners") have been "taking action" to get the "message" out to non-sXers by using violence, such as bombing stores, beating the shit out of people who drink/smoke/do drugs, setting fires and other such unnecessary acts of militant celibacy. I mean, come on! That action is mostly concentrated around Salt Lake City (in Utah), where it is recognized as a gang, and Syracuse, NY. But does it really mean that all sXers are like that?

I'll answer that for you: yes, all hard liners are sXers, BUT not ALL sXers are hard liners.

Think about that for a second. In the meantime, I'll be working on my papers, my projects, exams, assignments, and other school doings, working my ass off at my job, going to an event done by the Student Activities Programming Board (YAYS FOR HALO!), keeping my dorm room clean as best as I can, sniffing around for things to do, sleeping in on the weekends, keeping up with all my friends (not just the ones on SL--in fact, damn you Facebook for all your addictiveness!), and going sXe on SL for one more week! \o/

As a salutation, in parting, I bid you farewell til next time, and until then (since I was actually converted to punk music), PUNK THE FUCK OUT! \o/