I think I also do not spend a lot of time on the Second Life road… but there was a Time I did.
Reading a Blogpost of Alicia, I decided to think about if I am a Couch Potatoe in my Second Life. Or should I rather call it Parcel Potatoe, Firefox Potatoe or Windows and Apllication Potatoe?
Alicia thinks that she should once again go somewhere in SL. Looks like she makes a Comparison and found out that there was more Activity back in her Second Life Days.
She noticed that´s not only her. Most of here friends just stand on ther Platforms as well. So talking about my Second Life related Activity, I must say this is my own experience I made in the past as well. I defenetly can agree cos if I login to Second Life, I hang out on my own Parcel (Sky- and Sandbox) most of the time too. And it´s true that I rather spend more time with Forums, SL Marketplace, Twitter, blogging and so on. Sure I call it my SL Activity as all this is mostly related to SL. But the good Point Alicia makes is that it isn´t Inworld Activity. And when she said that she noticed the same with her Friends, I just can sign it cos I notice similar behavior of my Friends.
So in my Case I can explaine it so… back in the Days, Second Life was so new to me that really everything was magical and interesting. I was just amazed about each Place I visited. I became somehwat addicted and soon when I met a Person who introduced me to her Estate, Club and Community, then I became all the more inlove with Second Life. I believe back in these Days I did not minimize the Viewer very often. I remember everything was pretty interesting so that the rest of the Internet just became a minor matter.
The Place where I mostly did hang out was an Estate with a Club and I know I got my first free Inworld Shop there as we became very good Friends soon. At this Time I did rather have a small Collection of Products and they all were everything but not Complex or something someone would need. 
Just my beginner Stuff. And also at this Time I did not spend much Time to produce new Stuff. So apart from hang out my own Products there I worked at her Club as well and I remember back that I got a very good Amount of L$. At least compared to what most of the Dancer´s and Host´s get today in SL. It was 1000 – 2000 L$ (really no Joke!) per Hours for working in her Club and much more then my little Shop income. Sure this was a Reason to stay inworld and it would be a Lie if I would say no. But everyday when the Club were closed we did still hang out together too. So I wasn´t hunting L$ only.. I just enjoyed the Time with my new Friends. We had always cool Topics when we did chat and we had defenetly a lot of fun. So I can say it was rather the Friendship which did bring me online. After some Month I had the feeling it was not just the Team of the Club but rather something like a Family and Federation. The bad End of the Story is that she one Day closed her Estate forever. I believe I would still hang out with her much but she did stop to login regulary and later she wrote me that she wont come online often in the Future as ReaLife keeps her on the Run. I can say I miss her much as it was my most active (inworld) Time in SL. Exploring, chatting, dancing, listening Music, shopping and I cant count it all. Sure is I did see a lot of Places in those Days.
So when my Friend did stop loggin in, I had some more Time to learn more about Conten Creation within Second Life. Soon I became a regular on these bigger Sandbox´s and did experiment a lot with Prims and LSL scripting. As I was still a beginner when we talk about creating Content and from now on very fascinated with all that but a very slow creating one, I would call this Time my second Level of inworld Activity. Even if I still was sad that a Friend leaved Second Life, I can tell you that I in fact now did spend more and more Time inworld. I rented my first own Land and started my Store and later a Mall which I did rent out for Tenants. Managing all this alone did result in much more Activity but not only on my Land. Making connections with other Landowner, renting AdBoards here and there affected me to see more and more Places inworld.
But some day creating things out of Prims became routine anyhow. I just learned to create things I have in mind and now didn´t need to think about it much. I just started to create thing´s I had in mind and this Process became faster then before. With much more finished Products then back in the Days I noticed that Xstreet got a bigger Economy-impact then my Mall. The difference of Sales was so huge that I just started to think about closing my Mall and rent a much smaller Place to just have my Magic Boxes rezzed anywhere and a Skybox for new little Projects.
So what about today? They just merged Xstreet to SL Marketplace and the old good impact of Xstreets Sales were just the beginning. My sales on SL Marketplace even increased compared to the closed Xstreet. And after reading other Blogs I now know and bet that a very heavy Amount of Sales go rather through SL Marketplace instead of Inworld Stores. Not enough… new Features like Mesh Import makes Content Creators stay outside of SL to create Content. I do so now too.
Today? I believe I can get these fascinating Essentials of Second Life without logging in much. And there is for me the Problem. It became creating Content outside of SL, managing these Matters outside of SL, advertise it outside of SL. When things are done, then they get just adjusted inworld and then dropped in a Magic Box. Oh and soon we dont even have to rent Land for a Magic Box as we soon can sell Thing´s out of our Inventory. I believe all this has a huge negative Impact on the Virtual Estate Business too.
For socializing it´s pretty much the same.. Social Networks, Forums, blogging… I believe I spend more Time outside of SL today. You get these Second Life related News and hot Topics outworld.. and you can discuss it with People even if you are not online on the Grid. Do I like it? No I think Alicia is right. We should explore more often again Inworld. What I did now was losing the Fascination of SL, I had early Days in SL . The Question is if we are the Reason for that.. if we are lazy? If we lost Ideas where to go? If we lost Friends inworld? Or is this all due to some changes LL made?
Really I like new Features like Mesh Import and the upcoming Features. So.. well.. I am not sure. I just know that Content Creation became a very importend Part of my Second Life and so I can just judge it from this Perspective. Linden Lab gave us Tools like SL Marketplace and the Mesh Feature to just handle everything we want but not inworld. So there seems to be just a minimalized Reason for Content Creators to stay online on the Grid. If I could handle all this only Inworld and there was a Time… then I would probably rather be anywhere around on the Grid. I dont want to say that I dislike the changes of Linden Lab. Great Features arrived and will arrive soon. It´s just for me clear that they have a huge impact. They change Second Life.
Ok. Looks like for me socializing became simply suppressed by creating Content for SL. And now I dont do it often inworld. Even if I still have fun with what I do.. I agree.. it´s anyhow sad because there is maybe so much more I could do inworld. I sometimes just dont know what and why if I can do it without being around on the Grid.
However I think Alica found a Topic which might be for some of us pretty up to date. At least for me. I am sure we all have differend Reasons to be Parcel Potatoe´s or People who just login to put some Thing´s up for Sale. Maybe some of us are still often inworld. But I believe fact is that there are a lot of People who aren´t and if then they simply hang out on ther Parcel and have no other Ideas. Maybe I should start again to explore what SL can offer me apart from what I do now. Or maybe all this is just a subjective Feeling as we did spend already so much Time inworld in the past.. maybe it just feels differend then before. The latter would be what I experiences in other Virtual Worlds like World of Warcraft and so as well.
7 Years ago I did explore any Places in World of Warcraft just because I was nosy what there could be behind that Hill on the Horizon. But today I know there might be nothing then some low Level Monsters which wouldn´t even hurt me. That cool feeling of exploring new Worlds comes again when new Content or an Expansion arrives. But also only for a short Period. The Focus of my WoW Gameplay is now mostly Player versus Player Matches, new Dungeons, Raid´s and so. The World is just nothing new to me…
But sure! The World of Second Life does always undergo modifications! Maybe I should write that on a Note in front of my Keyboard so that I sometimes do anything else then now. 
So this is a Topic I did think about often in the past two or three Month. So that I lately did make a good new start with exploring the Linden Realms.. another Day I was listening and chatting in a Electronic Music Club. But then I got bored again.. I simply do not often have Ideas what to do in SL. But well… lets see…
Found a Blogpost about Second Life which made me thinking.
I found the Blogpost A Variety of Reasons to Go Virtual… of RoseCityRemona. She wrote about some Reasons to go Virtual and also added an interesting Poll you should participate. The Blogpost made me thinking about which Reasons I had to go Virtual and which Reasons I see.
So let me write down why I use Second Life and what I do in Second Life
I use Second Life to discharge my ideas and my creativity and for a Virtual Business Adventure which is much simpler to achieve then in RealLife where you would need money, connections and know-how in bureaucracy. I am german and germany is a hardcore bureaucracy country where everything is written,composed and stamped for the purpose of just having it written down. There is no reason other then keep you busy and give you headache or keep you short and tax you.
So I never would start a Company in RealLife as I defenetly wont get a depression. In Second Life a Company is your own and fun and there is not much obligations other then those you give your self. Sure it is still work also in SL but its differend. You can see it as a Game if you like and I do so. And the main thing is I can do what I like to do. Creating 3d Content. This is for me not possible in germany unless you have doctor title or best diplom and again connections. As I said they keep you short. They dont care if you have already know-how in this area. They simply want it on paper before they hire or teach you. And if you dont have a diplom they never believe you neither they would think about let you test-working for a week. They simply dont care about you and your life. I´ve seen some of my abilities and wanted to learn a job which fullfils me with passion. But I didn´t success at this point because the yardstick is very high. Which means I had to learn another job which I hate. Yes you did listen right I hate the job I learned in RealLife. There are other tasks I would rather manage with passion. Not only creative areas.. there are simply many areas I would fit better in then what I learned and have to do today.
So using Second Life is my pissed answer about the freak show in RealLife. Sounds hard but I really find more recognition in SL then in RL which is an evidence of incapacity for the place where I live in RL.
So yea.. in short you could in my case also say I use Second Life as theraphy, lol. This virtual enviroment gives me self-determination even if I know its just virtual and even if I dont get rich in Second Life.. but it makes me free and strengthen me as well for RealLife. I learned about my abilities. I learned I can be creative, I learned I am good in managing things, I learned I have potential in marketing, I learned I am not that bad in writing english at least there is much potential while my english teacher in school said in those days “You´ll never learn any language”. I in fact learned that I have abilities and potential although some people in my RealLife didn´t recognize it. This is what Second Life gave and gives me.
I´ve learned in Second Life that I could learn and do things in RealLife if a company would let me but they didn´t. The requirements are today set high, so that finding a Company which teach you or hires you always were a hard mission. Sure you could say “Why didn´t you study instead of just going to high-school?”. My answer is: I always did believe that I need abilities, potential, passion and interests in Topic to find what I want. I had the feeling this is not the case in RealLife.. you rather dont need abilies, potential, passion and interests but instead it will help you if you have connections, the best diplom you can get (which is sometimes funny because they demand already highest degree for plainest tasks here in germany), hardness or a big trail of slaim behind you. The latter is something I can´t offer anyway. But I think here is enough rant now. 
So my Reason to go Virtual? I live my dream, I use my potential, I improve my potential and I discharge my creativity. I simply enjoy it sometimes to go Virtual. But there also many Reasons to leave Second Life sometimes. Sometimes there must be a brake too because other Activities need my time.
At least I must mention… Sorry for my hard words and the ranting. It just made me thinking. Usually I am kind And no I am not unhappy with my RealLife. Maybe unhappy with my career. But overall I love Life. I love my Family, Friends, Pets and many other Activities. I enjoy my Life as there is much more apart from the career and money. And I am lucky that I found out what real luck and happyness is.
So what do you think? What are your Reasons to go Virtual?
So far,
Enjoy your first and second life
Greetings
