Early morning ramblings

I'm awake far too early this morning, nursing a cold that won't let me get back to sleep. I'd say that I'll end up taking a nap later to make up for it, but it's even odds whether or not I actually will. I may wake up enough with the help of food and a cup of tea that I'll be able to get by until the time at which I normally go to bed.

Decided to delete HeRO from my laptop and to download DreameRO instead, partly to avoid somebody I don't much want to talk to anymore, and partly because I screwed up the characters that I created there, through a lack of forethought and planning. I did all the research for Jazriyah and Razreesh last night, and I'll get all the detail I need for Suraiya while the client's still downloading. Possibly in between more episodes of Digimon Adventure 02.

It seems that no matter how hard I look, my city either doesn't have career counselors or just doesn't have any advertising for them, which is a real shame. I've thought about finding one in the past, as an aid to finding a job that will actually make good use of my skills instead of trying to force me to mold to a position I am not suited to in order to make money. I could potentially have access to one half a province away, provided I had transportation to them (I don't) and have a disability (I have challenges, but nothing that would be called a disability, I think, except on the really bad days). There are quizzes and tests that the government job bank has access to that can help you identify where your talents lie, but none of those will actually, say, vouch for me in the event I apply for a job in that field.

This is something I've complained about often. I can have all the skills in the world, but unless I've paid for and passed courses at some school or another to prove it, nobody will even look twice at me. I could be the world's best technical writer, for example, but I'll never be able to make use of that skill as a job because unless I've taken a course in technical writing, essentially learning what I already know (and thus wasting money on the class). If I had a career counselor, somebody with whom I could sit down and talk, they might be able to vouch for me, tell potential employers, "Oh yes, we've tested this one and she has all the skills you need." Or perhaps help me find financial assistance for going back to school.

Even being a baker these days requires accreditation. Something I could learn and master at home if I so desired, and short of getting a lucky break in a bakery that's a little lax on standards, I couldn't turn that into a career no matter how much I know.

Not that I want to be a baker. That was just an example, since I saw the profession listed on a summary of apprenticeships.

I suppose that there's really only so much a career counselor could do for me anyway. Just because I have certain strong skills doesn't mean that there's actually a market for them here.

Rei told me about somebody he used to work with who ended up leaving her retail job to to university after finding some organization in the city that helps with such thing, finds loopholes and all sorts of financial avenues. This person reportedly was told not to work at all through her education, that her full tuition and cost of supplies would be paid for, and she would have enough left over to pay her household expenses.

I wish Rei remembered the name of the organization that did this, since I'd love to take advantage of their services. If someone or a group of someones would be willing to pay for my education and my expenses while getting said education, I'd jump at the chance. Not having to work would mean I could handle a full-time course load, and be finished with a degree in four or five years.

I need to go to the unemployment office soon anyway, so maybe I'll ask them what they can do to help. I hear that the government is often willing to pay for at least some of a person's university education if they're on EI, gambling on the hope that they'll complete a degree and get a well-paying job in the country so that what they paid for me will be more than recovered by the taxes I'll pay in the future. I'll see that bet, if they give me the chance.

Busy busy busy.

Despite some fairly crushing news received earlier today, I actually feel rather good tonight. Friends have helped me with my problems, things aren't as dire as I first suspected they might be, and my mood has risen considerably.

For one reason or another, this has made me want to write. As much as I want to write some fanfiction right now, with my notes and ideas still scattered across various files and journals, I think it's best to work on something else for now, and to come back to fanfiction later. So Rei's whipped up some Darth Vaders (cola with grenadine) to keep up both going, and we're having an X-Files marathon while I write and she sketches.

I've had an idea for a while now that I'm hesitant to write, mostly because I'm afraid that the majority of readers won't recognize it for the satire that it is. I have a good number of friends who, in one way or another, have disabilities or other mental or physical hinderances to living, and hearing some of them talk has given me a lot of inspiration. Not in the, "ZOMG, you're so inspirational because you live in pain every day," kind of way (I have problems of my own and know what it is to struggle), but inspiration from their rants and dealing with the abled world.

One such complaint is people speaking for them, the abled speaking for the disabled to say that disabled people don't want cures and that "fixing" their condition would ruin an essential part of who that person in inside. Thus in the grand tradition of humanity going to extremes, I envisioned a world in which those with physical or mental problems are the norm, and those without such conditions are freaks of nature and deserve pity for not being special. Parents will crush a child's leg in order to get it amputated, work to give children psychological problems, all so that they can be normal by being different.

But there are some who escape such treatment and grow up what we would consider normal. These people are forced by society at large to live in an institution known as the simplex, the very opposite of complex. (Any connecton to herpes has been noted and winced at already.)

It's easy to see why I worry that this won't be received well. I can imagine that this sort of protrayal would not go over well with disability activists, for one. I know that some people with disabilities do actually think that way, too, that by being different they are therefor better, and who insist that anybody who doesn't recognise that they are special and have their own culture built around said difference is just willfully ignorant. I doubt they'd look kindly upon it either.

But what I have in mind is less a commentary on disability but more a commentary on the human condition to take things to extremes. Disability is merely the conduit I could well have used the low educational standards as a conduit instead, the marginaization of the intelligent and society favouring the underskilled. I could have used gender and sexuality, and idea I toyed with a while ago and would still like to use.

But right now, Simplex is my baby, and what I want to write. Even if it does nothing but take up space on my hard drive in the end, it will be interesting to write it and explore the themes.