Avatar Fun

Do you use the computer only for very worthwhile and thought-provoking activities? I do try to share some “very worthwhile” and “thought provoking” resources and ideas. But sometimes I like to include the lighter side of life, as well.

If you ever use your online experience “just for fun”, then you might like to make your own “avatar” at Yahoo. I found out that if you don’t have a Yahoo email account, you can still sign up for Yahoo, and you can still make an avatar. What IS an avatar? My old dictionary says, “an embodiment, bodily manifestation”. We can make a manifestation of the kinds of styles we might like to wear, pets we might like to have, places we might like to go some day. It becomes sort of a personality sketch.

After sending mine to two geographically-distant family members, they made their own; and we’ve been having fun sending them to one another as e-postcards. When I first shared my avatar with my (adult) daughter, she said it’s like playing paper dolls -- and then she spent an afternoon making hers. I think she was right; but who says we adults can’t play paper dolls? Ah, getting in touch with our youth…

I’m going to stick my neck out now and say this was not entirely frivolous, after all. Something inspired me yesterday to make an avatar of my (deceased) mother…a much younger mother, of course, than I last remembered her (all the avatars are young)…probably about as old as when I was a very young child. I dressed her in her favorite colors, with the facial expression I thought she’d have, in a beautiful house with a glowing fireplace (she loved to read house-beautiful magazines). I, who can’t draw a box, made such a “real” picture of my mom that I cried…the healing-type cry. For me, playing with avatars went from “just for fun” to “very worthwhile”.

If you have time (only if you have time; please don’t blame me if you lose an afternoon--smile)...if you have time, enjoy!