In Twenty-five Words or Less…

Actually, in exactly six words.  Today’s WordPress.Com Daily Prompt was: Write a six-word story about what you think the future holds for you, and then expand on it in a post.

I wonder if these tracks go anywhere…

It doesn’t take many posts for even the most unobservant reader (Not that I have any unobservant readers.. my followers are witty, wonderful, brilliant, and charming people and I don’t know what I would do without you!) to notice I’m kind of wordy.  So six words seemed an impossible quest.  Plus, quite frankly, I’ve been spending too much time logged into First Life lately.  I’m not complaining (well, not complaining much) but it makes it harder for me to predict the future when my Second Life time is bits and pieces haphazardly strewn around a crazy work and family schedule.  So, I don’t know the future, I don’t say anything in twenty-five words or less, and they want me to define the future in a six word story?  Yeah, right.

Look at those reflections! This sim is gorgeous!

Nitpickers will observe the phrase “Beats the f*** out of me” is exactly six words, so it would technically complete the assignment.  It’s what a mathematician would call a trivial solution.. intuitively obvious and providing no new information or insight into the situation.

Rubber Duckies, You’re the ones!

And yet, in a flash the answer came to me, like Athena stepping forth full grown from Zeus’s forehead.  I don’t know the future because I’m not sure what is going to change, but I know the present and I imagine the future will by and large be like the present, only a little different.  The point and purpose of ‘Time Well Wasted’ has always been clear to me, if not always well-verbalized and vocalized.  What I choose to share, however, fits very nicely into a six word mission statement…

Sexy Looks.  Interesting Places.  Random Musings.

I don’t stick to my template all that rigidly, because one of my purposes for this blog is to stretch and work out my writing muscles.  My standard post template isn’t good for all posts, nor is it intended to be.  But it does reflect my mission and focus for this blog.  “WHAT I’M WEARING” is about Sexy Looks.  Much of the joy of Second Life is the ability to look a little or a lot different every time I go wandering.  I make a point of not using the same skin or shape two days in a row, and I go through outfits at a rate to make a laundrywoman cringe and cry.  I take a perverse pride in the fact that I could walk upto a friend on a crowded sim and, unless they see the little floating name tag we all have, they wouldn’t know it was me.  Sometimes I do fancy formal.  Often my look is what I think of as “Stripper Halloween”, costumes, generally featuring short skirts, tight fits, and plunging necklines.  (I own multiple “naughty nun” costumes, a statement that says an awful lot about me.)  My casual look is young and flirty, with piercings and/or tats and/or heavy clunky boots to establish I have a tough side.  Case in point:

Heels over head in love with myself…

Today I decided I would be a scary sinister demon.  Which somehow became a sexy, flirty devil before I was through.  (Not actually much of a twist… If I become a schoolgirl, an angel, a nun, whatever, it always seems to become sexy and flirty before I’m through…)  I picked up the Demonia skin from Caverna Obscura for a costume event a while back.  I had originally started with a younger shape, but at the last moment I switched to the Sara shape from ~Blink~.  I was going to add wings and claws and a forked tail, but instead was distracted by my Devilish Neko set.  (This is where the sexy, flirty change started this time around…)  I wanted red hair to match my skin and neko set, so I went with Calla’s ImSoPlayful in ‘FruitPunch’.  (which sealed the deal on scary.  You cannot be scary if you are wearing playful hair, particularly if the hair color is fruit punch.  Just sayin’)  I also added a couple of tattoo layers: the doll makeup (blush, eyeliner, heart-shaped lipstick) is from Blue Blood; the ‘Lick My Boobies’ tattoo, with arrows for those who need a map, is from Egoxentrikax; the ornate gold cross on my back is from Prozak.  For the actual clothes, I have on the Celene outfit in Gold, which came from LC’s World of Fashion, including the bangle style bracelet I love on my right forearm.  I also have the Red Leather Kicks from Prozak which are my favorite boots- comfortable, sturdy, and if I kick you in the shin while wearing them, it will get your attention!  Lastly, I also have a black choker on, one of my favorite necklaces.

A beautiful scenic starry night.

In my standard posting template the next heading/paragraph is all about “WHERE I’M AT:”  This blog is part fashion blog, but also part journal.  I enjoy the beauty that folks have created, whether it is beauty to adorn me, or beauty for me to walk through (and adorn).  I love exploring, seeing new places, visiting new sims.  All of these pictures have been taken in Cours, a (new-to-me) sim that I learned about from my friend Zee’s response to Strawberry’s monday meme a few weeks ago.  I’ve played even more than usual with the windlight settings (Strawberry’s fault for her meme the following week which reminded me how little I understand wind lights and how useful they would be if I did understand them…)  Telling folks where I’m at is my way of highlighting the interesting places I get to visit and encouraging them to share some commonality of experience with me.  I rarely know where I will visit next… random trolls of the search engine, joining hunts, recommendations from friends and bloggers and friendly bloggers, all are grist for my mill, and I usually make it up as I go along.  But I want pictures worth sharing, so that means I only go to interesting places.

Whoo, all this exploring has me exhausted. I’ll just rest here a bit….

And the third heading in my standard post template is “WHAT’S ON MY MIND” because I’m always thinking about something.  (Well, usually thinking about something.  If I’m completely honest, there are moments when my mind is a blank slate waiting for some one to pick up some chalk…)  Moreover, my mind operates uniquely.  Partly because I am a verbal thinker as opposed to a visual or mechanical thinker.  Partly because I somehow manage to combine a deep focus that looks at how and why things operate and notices the tiniest of details with a shallow attention span that careens madly from place to place like a drunken pinball.  (I joke about attention deficit disorder sometimes, but I may have it.  My firsty is old enough that attention deficit disorder was a much rarer diagnosis when he was in school, and the list of symptoms for adult ADD is like a checklist for his personality: distracted during mundane tasks, hyper focus, losing track of time and underestimating how long a task will take, disorganization and forgetfulness.)  Partly because my sense of humor runs towards puns, word play, and the whimsey inherent to things that are out of context.  Although, the sense of humor may follow from the other two quirks… puns and wordplay are verbal humor and poor impulse control, e.g. poor ability to suppress whimsical impulses when they are inappropriate, is another item on the ADD check list.  Still, most people just sum up the way my mind works as ‘kind of random’ and sharing whatever random thought happens to be passing through my skull at the moment is another side of the ‘journal’ aspect of this blog.

So there you have it: Time well wasted is part fashion blog, part journal.  It is a regular entry about what I’m wearing, where I’m at, and what’s on my mind.  It can be summed up in six words as Sexy Looks.  Interesting Places. Random Musings.  It is the present, past, and future of this blog, and I hope it brings as much joy to the readers as it brings me to write.