My First Runway Fashion Show

I'm standing on the lawn at D2K frantically trying to organize my runway outfits for my first fashion show. My inventory is giving me fits, and I'm cursing myself for having bought a bunch of "no copy" accessories. I've got less than an hour before the show starts, and I'm not even close to being ready to walk the runway.

I've also just realized my AO isn't working, and nothing I do seems to be able to bring it back to life. The backup walk I loaded to my shoes is not working either. Oh, and to top it off the region just got hit with another restart. It must be my fifth relog in the past hour. I'm close to tears. How in the world did I get myself into this situation?

Flashback thirty days. I start Second Life with no clue as to what I'm getting myself into. I skip most of Orientation Island and jump right in, figuring how hard can it be. Big mistake.

I'm quickly overwhelmed. I can't walk without bumping into everybody. I keep putting boxes on my head. On top of this, I look like a refugee from an ugly parallel virtual world - and no amount of slider adjustment seems to help.

Out of desperation, I spend an entire week attending every class I can find. No matter what the subject, I go. Somehow in my marathon of classes, I stumble across the Moda Modeling School. On a lark, I decide to take the first class while secretly laughing at the thought of me being a model. However, I need something 'fun' to do after a long day of building and scripting class.

Surprise of surprises, I get hooked and start to picture myself standing at the end of a runway in a glamorous evening gown as camera flashes go off all around me. I quickly sign up for the rest of the sessions, and over the next several weeks, learn how to walk, how to uses poses, and how to shoot and build my own portfolio. I get a significant makeover.

Even better, I meet a lot of really great people in my class. We're lead by our instructor and mentor, Jujudoll Dancer, who gives us just the right mix of constructive criticism and positive feedback. Juju is great at pushing us to learn and do things for ourselves, even giving us "homework" assignments to reinforce her lessons. We get so carried away at learning to be models, we lose track of time and work on our assignments well into the night on many occasions.

After a quick relog, I'm back at the D2K runway with the rest of my class. My emotions are running high, though the encouraging words of my teammates quickly pull me back from the edge. I get focused and somehow manage to rig an AO to handle my walk. I find a coupe of poses and pull them out to use manually. I'm ready to walk.

The show starts. Lag hits. I make my first turn on the runway. Confusion and chaos reign backstage. Changes to walking orders, wardrobe challenges, even a few crashes. We adapt, we deal, we survive, we conquer.

Afterwards, I'm physically and emotionally drained yet ecstatic at having completed my first fashion show. It's been a long and challenging day, and one that I never would have thought possible when I joined Second Life.