Boredom B. Gone!

Bored at home with the whole family in your face all the time? Why not break out now — there are dozens of ways to spend time at home, the first of which is of course to do your spiritual practices while you have a clear chance to do so.

Got a bunch of art supplies sort of scattered around everywhere? Okay, gather them all into one small corner of a room, then get the whole family started making and hanging an art gallery show.

If you live alone, you’ll put up a one-person show.

If you’re talented with Adobe Photoshop, you can try making some art graphics by hand or mathematics, meaning landscapes, nudes, figure drawings, portraits, abstracts, still lifes and of course computer-generated graphics.

In the case of computer art, it’s a question of recognizing great art, kind of like the scientist who conducted the experiment on the premise, “An Infinite Number of Monkeys On An Infinite Number of Keyboards will eventually turn out all the world’s greatest literature.”

He says to his fellow science guys, “Hey, this chimp really has something… I think it’s gonna be a line from Shakespeare…yeh, it is — To be or Not to Be, that is the Gezertenplat.”

Well, it’s close, and eventually the entire play will come to be written by some chimp somewhere, but will anyone see the tree falling in the forest?

Got Garden? If you have a plot of land, you can take some time outside to do some serious gardening. This year and the next five years, you’ll be happy to have the extra food when the food-chain breaks down for one reason or another — it happens several times, as I recall from my virtual gaming guide back home on Norton Street.

If you aren’t lucky enough to have a garden, how about starting a few windowboxes? If you’re living on a busy street and you’re occupying the lower floor of a crowded tenement building in a squalid section of town, you might consider indoor gardening or hydroponics.

If you have a backyard but it isn’t planted with food crops, you could use it for a number of activities, including things you might not think of, like building and flying a complex and sophisticated kite or model airplane or helichopper drone — just don’t fly it over a spot where if it crashes, you’ll end up being compromised if you dare to go get it.

Don’t get frisky. Everyone, including Nature, hates a smart-ass.

Cornhole, croquet, miniature golf, racquet games and ball games are all possible, but again, make sure they don’t get outside your well-fenced yard, and if folks are hanging out nearby, don’t venture out, not even to say “Hello”. Wave from inside, knock on a window, bang on a windowsill, but DON’T open the window. Just wave. Conduct all conversation on ZOOM, not face-to-face.

Does this sound terribly paranoid? It isn’t. This virus is out to get you. Don’t be an idiot and help it. Keep your distance and avoid touching ANYTHING ever — good advice anytime.

Be an Immortal Being. This isn’t as hard as it sounds. Get involved in discovery, find out not just who you are, but you you were. Attend an Ashram “Come as you Were” Reincarnation Party, where you dress up in one of your old incarnations.

There’s a wide selection of bodies, including some that aren’t anywhere near human, which might be a refreshing change — it certainly was, in the distant past.

If you have room for an above-ground pool, those things are incredibly cheap these days, and the summer months are coming up real soon. July will be in your face before you can whistle “Yankee Doodle”.

If you know the tune and lyrics, go ahead and sing out. You can record concerts, instructionals and lessons in ZOOM and then upload them on youtube, to attract folks to your personal LIVE classes on ZOOM, for which you will of course ask a donation.

I have always throughout the ages asked for donations in the following way:

“No more than you can easily afford.”

If that’s nothing, so be it.

Do you have a bunch of magazines around the house? Well, this might be the perfect time to read ALL of them twice or three times, or you could color the pages with crayon over the printed colors, which comes out so horribly you’ll be amazed at how bad it looks, but it DOES take up the slack, the awful slack, and you can get by for another hour just on mindless tedium, a specialty of the house.

If you really want to spend some futile hours, make some jewelry, then put it aside until you can show it safely. Spend a little time calculating how long that will probably be. Again, this all times time, and having too much time on your hands can be such a drag if you don’t know what to do.

Knowing what to do gives you power. You can be a “Do Something Now” consultant or specialist. Your job is to constantly ask, “What do you want to do now???” when your client stops doing something and stands there in total wonder.

Total Wonder is a state of mindlessness that even YOU can achieve, with a little effort and a lot of free time, which you now have, thanks to the deadliest virus that ever hit civilization.

I had a really nasty cough back in one of the Ice Ages, I think it was the Third, but it all blurs with the passage of time, which is why you have nothing to do right now.

In order to choose wisely, you have to know the options. So what ARE the options? What CAN you do around the house if you’re trapped there forever???

Good question, and I happen to have at least part of the answer. The other part you’ll have to develop yourself through practice, practice, practice.

Nobody can just do nothing without practice. It has to be learned over time, it doesn’t automatically appear.

If you want to be relaxed, you have to WORK at it.

How about a little time in the kitchen? You can cook, bake, decorate a cake, make cupcakes, fudge, brownies, do up an avocado dip or just clean. Don’t neglect to take a snapper of your product and upload it on your favorite social media sites.

So much for cooking. But then, with or without cooking, there’s always cleaning.

If you have the powerful and uncontrollable urge to Brillo-Pad the Earth, this is the time to start on that project, and no better place to start than the tub or the sink full of dirty dishes.

If your garbage has been piling up, how about squaring it neatly so it doesn’t feel like it’s coming out of the ground to eat your neighborhood — no, that’d be the giant mound of  man-eating “Jello”, heading toward the nearest movie theater to devour the crowd.

That’s what happens when you go out, so don’t.

Host a huge party at the Prosperity Virtual Ashram in Second Life. You can mingle with hundreds of unmasked Avatars and sing, dance, tell stories and more, and it takes hours and hours of time to do this, plus a stop at an after-hours jazz club in Second Life — there are tons of them, including the one that YOU could host if you wanted to, on the Mainland.

Spend some time doing your scrapbooking — if you have my basic scrapbook instruction manual, which is available ONLY in digital form, you can really swing with this.

There are thousands of ways to scrapbook without spending a dime or a single minute in a paper arts store. Learn how to apply art skills to crafts to create rare and unusual gifts.

Reading a book is a good thing, and something long-forgotten in our computerized world. Set up a reading corner somewhere and use that area only for that activity. Reading aloud is great, even if you’re alone.

Work on that puzzle book over in the corner of the back shelf.

Board games are good for a while. Get out the old Yoga Mat and have at it for a couple of minutes.

Create digital greeting cards and send them to everyone you know and some you don’t.

In Second Life, you can attend social gatherings of 100 LIVE unmasked and non-dangerous participants without fear of infection.

You can hold Press Conferences, Lectures, Demonstrations and more, and you can buy or rent land and build or improve parcels and resell them at a HUGE profit, and what’s more, there are millions more in virtual worlds now then there were a month ago.

The ZOOM server has crashed with overload several times now, and youtube and facebook are pushing their own limits of traffic on their sites.

It’s really a boom on Zoom.

You can play story style videogames, or shooters or simulations and a whole bunch of newly created games like “Animal Crossing” which is played on an ordinary browser, no game engine or client-directed download and install needed.

In short, it’s fast, free and easy, and that’s what anything has to be these days. People don’t realize that NOTHING comes without some effort, even those things that seem automatic, like farting and whistling — they don’t. They require mastery, and that only happens over a period of time.

Well, maybe not the farting, but the whistling, especially in tune, is not that easy, and nobody can do it perfectly right then the very first time.

If they do, it’s a skill that came from a past life.

That’s how I play flute, guitar, drums, oboe, clarinet, sax, piano, vibes, bass, banjo, ukelele, harmonica, digeridoo and more — I don’t learn, I recover my skills, and you can, too.

It’s easy with my Past Lives Skill Recovery Method. No need to master it, you already have it, thanks to the time and effort you put into it in a past life. Spending hours now re-learning something you already once knew and had mastered is a waste of time.

Why re-invent the wheel?

Still, re-learning something long-forgotten can be time-consuming, if that’s what you’re after.

Record a song, make a video, do something live online in a streaming way.

I just came across a list of 100 things to do in Second Life, but I have several suggestions that will produce the exact effect you want.

  • ASHRAM PRACTICES — The entire landscape is filled with things to do, practices of all kinds and work of various types.
  • PLAY 18 HOLES OF VIRTUAL GOLF — Go to the green oviod transporter near the Temple and press the “Golf” button and be prepared for some fun and challenge. It’s a LOT harder than you think. One round equals 1000 turns of The Wheel.
  • WORK ON THE FARM — There’s a farm right next door to the golf course country club, and you can perform tasks like milking, hauling, plowing and a host of other activities, all sorts of different chores you can do, all of which help the local economy.
  • RIDE A MOTORCYCLE — There’s a motorcycle dispenser right near the entry circle — can’t miss it. Over-correction is the enemy, and it’s worse on a bike than it is in a car or an airplane.
  • FLY AN AIRPLANE — Airplanes are hard to fly in Second Life — again, over-correction is going to be the big challenge, along with waiting for the computer to regain you when you’ve just crossed from one realm to the next, more or less what happens when you cross ANY boundary between realities, such as what happens with the SuperBeacon and the Matrix.
  • DRIVE A CAR — There are several varieties of car dispensers, and I’m deciding now on which I’ll use for the Ashram. The whole idea of dispensers is that once you get off the vehicle, or it has crashed somewhere obscure and unknown, you needn’t worry about locating its remains and spiriting it away into the Land of Deleted Items. It just “poofs” away, and it’s no longer there to concern you. Vanishing items are called “TEMP” and they are, indeed, temporary. They vanish when you move outside their AGRO circle, about 10 in-world meters or more.
  • SAIL A BOAT — This is the most rewarding, but it is going to take some time, effort and serious application to the skills needed, in order to train yourself in the Ashram so you can undertake a BIG SEA voyage on the BLAKE SEA, and I’ll help you prepare for it and find a way to launch your very own boat there without paying a penny, or you can rent a dock for about $10 U.S. Dollars per month.
  • CREATE AN ITEM — This requires some building skills, which you can build up in the Builder’s Area in the virtual Ashram, and that’s where Uncle Claude does his Beginner Builders Classes, but if you want to try your skills and your luck, go to the SANDBOX in Second Life and try to build a house at under 50 PRIMS, and at the same time, learn about PRIMS, PERMISSIONS and MESH in the process.
  • LEARN TO DRESS YOURSELF — Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But it’s not, and in Second Life, there are a hundred pitfalls, things that can go wrong with makeup, hair, nails, skin, eyes, chin, cheeks and ears and more, and working all that out will re-create you in the shape of a “Fashionista”, a makeup and fashion maven who has all the answers and is willing to give them out free to all SUBSCRIBERS, and that’s how you make your money — sell ads on your dissertations.
  • WRITE A BOOK ABOUT SECOND LIFE — This can be anything from how to get on there, what to do, how to go about doing it safely and more, all the way to “How I learned to Like Second Life” or “What I did to make real money in Second Life” or “How I spend my time” or “Virtual Sailing the Blake Sea”. Tell us the details of your expedition and experience sailing the Blake Sea, for instance.
  • LEARN, FIND OR INVENT A GAME IN SECOND LIFE — Second Life has a lot of games. I could have recommended a number of Second Life games that are ongoing, but by the time you read this, they might not be there anymore, as new improved games come onto the scene. I have a ping-pong table up near the pizza hut, but I’m not sure it works — my bet is, it doesn’t, but I’ll find something that does, eventually. Patience is a skill one learns, not one that one is born with.

There are hundreds more, but I’ll recommend at the top of my list, the sailing solution — why? Because there’s a LOT of preparation for a major Blake Sea expedition. You can easily become lost and you can run into trouble spots as well — places where locals have placed booby traps — and you need to know about them to avoid them.

Navigation is important, and you’ll both sail and fly by instrument over the Blake Sea or you’ll be lost in space.

There are many other realms in Second Life, but not all of them are safe, meaning that there can be predators lurking about, so be very careful, and don’t be overly friendly when you’re just in a new space and you don’t know the rules.

Actually, you need to thoroughly research before venturing into those spaces, because it’s all too easy for someone to latch onto your Avatar and follow it and find it anywhere you go, which is why we sort of keep to ourselves and remain in the Ashram, which we keep safe and clean.

We don’t use child avatars in the Ashram, because this requires special permissions from the Linden Labs people, and requires special notifications and procedures, so please don’t select a youngster as your avatar, unless it’s an animal avatar, such as a baby panda or a chick’s head, wings and feet popping out of a partly hatched egg.

Yes, there’s an avatar like that, and if it’s no longer available — people on the marketplace come and go as they will — you can make one easily enough.

Well, maybe not. If you have some 3D modeling skills, you can do wonders.

SKILL GAMING is easy to find, but be careful about predators, always be on guard and ready to duck out fast, if need be. Best to travel in pairs, or groups, and that means you can take expeditions together. Try flying a wing of aircraft together, or taking a FLEET of Bandit sailboats out there.

BANDIT has a showroom where you can try out the fifty or so boats they make, and they are the best, the easiest to sail and the most controllable of all the boats on Second Life.

That’s not an arguable point, but you’re welcome to find the exceptions on your own. I’m sticking with the BANDITS that I run, plus a few fancy custom craft that are not available now.

When you change Avatar bodies and skins, it’s like changing bodies, getting used to being a New You. When you take on the activities, you work to burn off Karma and to gain Merit.

It’s all about the beads.

The basics can be mastered right there in the Ashram, and then after mastery, you can take your navigation skills out to the big oceans in Second Life, and there’s PLENTY out there to explore!

Why arrange the furniture again? Get into Second Life and take the Second Life Challenge!

See You At The Top!!!

gorby