Uhoh...
From reading Mera's blog this morning, it sounds like I'm not the only one getting a tad burnt due to overcommitting themselves inworld. :( I went shopping for hair with her yesterday, and she mentioned that she hadn't slept the night before, because she'd been online. Now, I've stayed up late before, but never SL-ed for 24 hours straight. And she was back online last night when I logged in at..11pm-ish. And still there at 1:30am when I gave up to go get some rest. That's a recipe for burn-out if ever I heard one. So perhaps it's simple exhaustion talking there. I really hope Mera can offload some of her schedule - she's fun to just hang out with. Not to mention that if I had the time and the ability, everything on her schedule sounds like a ton of fun.
Not a day goes by that I don't wish I had more hours on SL to figure out how to do X or learn more about Y or just hang out at Z. And yet, I spend a phenomenal amount of time, just flaked out at the lake. But this is supposed to be a relaxing hobby, not necessarily an intellectual stimulus (although that's fun too). Some of my favourite times on SL have been just hanging out with the cool people I've met there (and I've met a lot). Actually, now that I think of it, all of my favourite times have been relaxing with my friends there. :) So why on earth would I "waste" my precious time hanging with my friends on learning new things?
And although my RL job isn't the most challenging, and I can do some stuff online from work (like write in blogs for example), I can't learn things.. at least not very well. I get interrupted too often. And if I'm not careful I start to resent the people that are interrupting me to do my actual job. :P
Mera's got a way-cool thing on the main page of her blog that tells you whether she's online. I must ask her how she did that. And Dolmere had some PHP stuff that he pointed me to that apparently tells the status of the Icecast server. And I found a thing last night that someone else wrote to make the incorporation of del.icio.us links that much easier. And I do have a header graphic that I was playing with, I just need to fiddle with it some more to get it sized appropriately. And there's always my resume to finish laying out...
Comments
This is one of those things, Coal, that people don't speak up about as much as they could--or should sometimes--so it's good both you and Mera have said so. I know some volunteers felt they weren't being helpful enough, when I saw them as doing *so* much, and they just pushed themselves to exhaustion. Actually, I can relate, because I see myself as moving very slowly.
The cost of burnout is never to be taken lightly as it causes greater irreparable damage in the long run. I've seen some great helpers come--and then go--because within a couple months, they had depleted their energy and took a sour look at SL because of it. Not saying that's what'd happen here, but recounting from previous experiences.
Posted by: Torley Linden | April 23, 2006 06:53 PM