“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

Well, basically everybody agrees that 2016 was a flaming trash fire, but I wanted to take some time to go back and find the good things that happened to me this year.  For one thing, Peri and I both got accepted to Evergreen State College.  But lots of amazing things happened to me in 2016.  Here we go!

January:
1.) My partner and I spent a weekend in Portland, hung out with a friend there, and took a beautiful scenic drive on the way back home.

Since I returned to Second Life about a year ago, I’ve been trying to recapture a sense of community that I had lost.  It’s time to admit to myself that it isn’t going to happen.  Too much has changed, too many of the places where I felt at home are done & over with.

Le Cimetiere isn’t coming back.
ArthOle isn’t coming back.
Fracture is over (for me, at least).
The art scene is over (too corporate now, & only certain types of art & artists get any attention).
The world of Second Life moved on without me while I was gone.  I don’t have a place there anymore, though I might still come back to build for fun.

It’s time to move on.

Saturday 16th January 2016
Starting at 5 pm SLT with over two hours of music.
With a specially prepared Bowie-themed installation, music, and dancing.
Join us to pay tribute to one of the greatest artists of our time.
Located at the Doors of Perception installation at Intermundia, Kress — the home gallery of veteran SL artist Nebulosus Severine.
TELEPORT HERE —> secondlife/Kress/170/91/639

Too Many Flowers – Closing on Sat., 1 August, 2015

Too Many Flowers, the provocative installation by Nebulosus Severine at the INTERMUNDIA gallery, will close & be dismantled on 1st August, 2015.

Nebulosus is currently looking for a new venue for the installation, with hopes to expand upon it and bring it to a wider audience.
Please join the Intermundia Meta-Kosmonauts group for future announcements about the art of Nebulosus and guest artists at INTERMUNDIA.

TP here –> http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Kress/181/93/147

What A Weird Week It’s Been – But, Hey, I’ve Finally Woken Up From Cyberspace Cryosleep!

It has been a crazy week full of ups & downs, but my big news is that I was FINALLY able to purchase a (refurbished) laptop, which means I can finally devote more time to getting down with some art that requires some heavy-duty computer processing power.

Except that I don’t have a lot of time at the moment — my big move to the west coast is only about 5 weeks away.  Between now and then, I still have a TON of stuff to do.

“You’re Not Going to Be a New Person, You’re Still Going to Be You”

When I visited my therapist a couple of days ago, I told her that I hoped my move to Washington would be a transformational experience for me.  I’ve been stuck in a rut here for a long time.  I’ve been an emotional & mental train wreck for the past… well, forever. I need to resume better eating & exercise habits.  I’ve been able to motivate myself to do it before, and I need to do it again.  I’m not getting any younger, and the older I get, the harder it’s going to be for me to get where I need to be.  But anxiety and depression — largely caused by my current home — has me feeling confined, trapped, and unable to move forward.

She told me, flat out,

“You’re not going to magically become this new person when you move out there.  You’re still going to be you.”

Of course, she didn’t mean that in a negative way.  She wasn’t suggesting that change is impossible.  Rather, she wants me to assess the situation for what it really is.  She explained that yes, the change in my living arrangements is most likely a very positive thing, and it can lead to many improvements for me.  But all of my inner problems are not going to just disappear.  And I shouldn’t expect them to, because it would set me up for a big letdown.

Which makes perfect sense to me.  Back in 2003, when I first moved into my current residence, I had that mind-set.  Prior to that, I had been living a miserable, cramped, no-privacy existence for eight years at my grandmother’s house.  I thought that moving into a new home would free me, that I’d be like a phoenix rising from ashes, that I’d be this completely shiny brand new person.  But, I wasn’t.  My life fell apart in other ways after that.  The disappointment that I was NOT a “new” person who was suddenly happy and fulfilled added to my despair and only made things worse.  Instead of being able to appreciate the new improvements that moving did for me (a bigger house, more room, more privacy, fewer aggravating people to live with), I was really let down that I was not magically happy.  It took me a few years to pull myself out of that funk.

One of the good things that came out of that miserable time is that I found Second Life.  In May of 2005, I think I read a short blurb about it in a magazine — I can’t even remember which one.  It was, quite honestly, just the thing I needed.  I’ve never really been a gamer, but have been known to occasionally really, deeply latch onto a game every now & again.  I was obsessed with Animal Crossing for awhile, and logged many, many hours playing Morrowind on my roommate’s Xbox.  It was just about the time I was getting tired of Morrowind that I first created my Second Life account.

6-month old Neb, in November 2005

So, in a way, I did become a new person.

Through my avatar, I learned a lot about myself.  But I was not a completely different person in the way I had anticipated becoming when I moved.  I was still ME — but by spending time logged into Second Life as my cyberspace-self, I was able to deepen my introspection.  I learned to grow and to become stronger.  I learned how to accept and make peace with certain things about myself that I had been blocking out for a long time.  I learned more about relationships, both friendly and romantic.  I learned a lot about being an artist, too.  I have not cured all of my problems, but some of them have gotten less severe.

When I finally get to my new home in Washington, I will try to keep in mind that, yes, I will still be ME — moving to a new place will not be a magic wand of change.  However, I will have new experiences and opportunities that can help me to grow and change for the better.

*Postscript:  Moving is expensive as hell, and you can help me to raise money AND reduce the amount of stuff I have to bring with me by buying some of my items on Ebay.  Or, by passing it along to people you think might want some of it.  Most items are books, but I have a few Children’s DVDs too.  Subject matter: Art, craftmaking, photography, New Age/Wicca/Pagan items, blank journals, cookbooks, graphic novels, psychology, movies & film, poetry, collecting, animals, fiction/literature, science fiction, fantasy, humor.  ALL CHEAPLY PRICED. Have a look!

—->  http://www.ebay.com/sch/nebulosus_severine/m.html

I feel like I’ve only just returned to the metaverse, and now it’s time to return to my avatar to stasis yet again.

First & Recent – Blog Challenge

Around the Second Life blogosphere, there is a meme challenge going around, & sometimes I think those are fun to do, ANNNND I am an introspective person by nature, SO I thought I would participate.

The challenge:

Share a side by side comparison of your first blog picture beside a recent picture of your avatar. Don’t forget to share the link to your image in the comments and add your pictures to the Blog Memes flickr group.

I believe this meme idea was given to me by Ms. Trixie Cliassi last year. The idea was to share a comparison of your first blog post to your most recent or new one. I’ve just taken a new snapshot similar to the old one of what my avatar looks like today. She also asked us to share our thoughts on how we feel we’ve improved as photographers or bloggers.

(Source: StrawberrySingh.com)

For my version of this challenge, I will instead focus on my past decade as an artist working in the metaverse.

A Conversation Between the Artists On Opening Day in INTERMUNDIA

INTERMUNDIA’s first guest artist is Sowa Mai (RL artist Stephen Beveridge).  Today, as of 10 AM PST we are officially open.  As we arrived, we had the chance to chat & catch up before guests arrived. We’ve worked together before, but it has been many years since we’ve been able to do so, since I haven’t been able to log into Second Life much in the past two and a half years.  In this session, we chat about the nature of art in SL: inspiration, methods, and the recent art climate — including the newly-opened Museo del Metaverso. Later, we are briefly joined by Banrion Constantine, another Second Life artist with a lot of metaverse art under her belt. With permission, I am posting excerpts of our conversation here. (*edited for conciseness & clarity)

Nebulosus and Sowa at Intermundia

INTERMUNDIA – Opening Sun 8 March 2015 10am-1pm SLT
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“The gods, meanwhile, were relegated to the Intermundia, the space between earth’s atmosphere and the universe beyond, where they could go about their divine business without interfering with the natural course of things.”
— Mesoamerican Religion and Multiverses: Part One
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INTERMUNDIA is the new artspace of veteran SL artist Nebulosus Severine, featuring a rotation of special guest artists.

INTERMUNDIA’s inaugural gallery run includes:
Too Many Flowers – by Nebulosus Severine
Ars Ludus – by Sowa Mai

SLurl:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Kress/218/90/147

Facebok event:  https://www.facebook.com/events/658561030939599/