Fading Lights

My awesome job as a Secret Agent for The Borg has ended.

I wasn't fired or anything - the assignment as a temp ended. But they didn't hire me. I found out yesterday that the reason was my 'overall metrics', despite the fact that they REPEATEDLY told everyone that they don't hire based on that. And they don't want me back when they need more help later.

I'm bummed, to say the least.

I spent the last week mourning the loss. I LOVED that job. I loved the people, I loved the company, and I loved what I did. I worked my ass off learning their products and trying to understand my customers and up my productivity. Losing out on it hurts, because I really *wanted* to be there.

There were downsides to it though, which I've been reminding myself of. For one, I've written barely a couple hundred words in the past *three months* while I was working there. I haven't been on Yahoo consistently for ages, because I only recently discovered that my computer can handle gaming and chatting at the same time. My temper has been shorter, due to stress from work and lack of outlets as I wasn't writing or chatting as much. I spent most of my days off trying to recoup my energy to deal with another week, and I was cranky and stressed if I didn't get that one full day to myself. I was constantly worn out from the amount of time and energy I was putting into my work and my customers and my co-workers.

I was really happy, though. For the most part. -Sighs-

The good news is that I'm still employed by my temp agency. I talked to my handler yesterday, and apparently I'm high priority to get into a job now, which is good. Turns out they love that I finished my assignment with perfect attendance, didn't do anything specifically 'wrong' there, and I have admin experience. I'm still job hunting on my own, because I'm leery of how long it's going to take them to actually *get* me into a position, but I did get serious cred with them from this, so. That's worth a lot.

Still.

So I've been playing lots of Harvest Moon and things and reading fic. Browsing internets. Trying to get ideas for my Power Rangers Universe Building Exchange assignment. I'm finally halfway through re-watching Masked Rider, and have developing headcanon and the beginnings of a fic. Just two more spinoffs and eighteen seasons of PR to go!

It's not the end of the world, and I'm getting over it. I'm just ... not quite there yet.

This post has been brought to you by Madie, my new Nintendo 3DS. She is gorgeous and I love her and I will now be flailing forever. (Even if typing by stylus is incredibly tedious.) FOREVER.

ETA: Notes to self: Madie cannot do HTML or preview. Whoops.

Last night, I was explaining to arytra.livejournal.com about the Power Rangers Super Legends game I bought recently.

So here's a fun fact: Power Rangers Super Legends, which is a game clearly made by people who know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about Power Rangers, has such a thing as Power Posing. It powers up your attacks for the next few hits. You press a series of buttons, and they do three poses, and there's a burst of colored smoke behind them and everything.

So yes, it is actually a thing. Assuming you believe the game which, again, not made by anyone who has EVER watched an episode. -Rolls eyes-

Which makes me sad, because the Dino Thunder game was loads of fun and surprisingly helpful on figuring out how the Zords work.

( Power Rangers: Super Legends in Summary (So far.) )

It's not a *terrible* game, but it's pretty much something I play for the button mashing and randomness factor.

Anyway, when I was telling her about this and all the OOCness, it spawned a comment:

Arytra: Maybe Wes stole Eric's morpher. Or... or... oh! Oh! Maybe in this reality, Eric was red and Wes was Quantum!
Akume: ... That would be kind of fascinating, actually.

For some reason, my brain started pondering how that would work this morning while I was in the shower. It's not that I can't see how it could happen - provided I stuck with my headcanon that Alex was descended from both Wes *and* Eric. But I have no plot. It's just a bunch of random scenes in my head.

Seeing as I was planning to attempt to work on Ambiguous Living Spaces today, this train of thought was less than helpful. So I tried to turn my muse's attentions to the scene I left off at last night instead.

Somehow that turned thinking about the Samurai AUs I've seen around (Which are all wonderful! ♥) where Jayden was the one sent away to learn the sealing symbol, and Lauren stayed to lead the team. My ShinyAntonioMuse took that thought and ran it into my Bright Skies universe. Suddenly I have a new bunny of Antonio getting adopted by Rocky and raised by the former Rangers, until one day a few years later, he senses Something Is Wrong with Jayden, and drags his guardians off to find him, and they learn that Jayden's caretaker died. Jayden gets taken in by Antonio's surrogate family as well, and the two boys grow up together, eventually coming to help the Samurai Rangers as a pair.

And *then*, while browsing DeviantArt today, I found this *fabulous* picture, Genderbend Edwin, by viria13. (It made me giggle lots. ^.^) The author's note had this to add:

A friendly artist tip: if you have no a clearest idea what to draw, genderbend some of your otps:33

My first thought was that I can't imagine that genderswapped Jayden and Antonio would be any different than the way I already write them. (I partially blame punkpinkpower and her adorable All the Boys and All the Girls for this.)

Arytra: I don't think it works as well with writers. ^_^;
Akume: That depends entirely on who you're writing.
Akume: Genderswap Wes/Eric would be *hilarious*.
Akume: ... GOD DAMN IT.

And now I'm drowning in bunnies, because Eric and Wes as opposite Rangers sounds interesting if not plotless. Jayden being raised by the former Rangers is ADORABLE in my head and my ShinyAntonioMuse approves of anything that gets him more Antonio/Jayden. And now I have ALL THE PMS jokes to make about Erica, and her epic bitch fights with Whitney. -_-;;;

I do these things to myself, really.

I refuse to discuss any actual progress/lack of progress on my CampNano because it seems like everytime I talk about my novels, I stop writing them. Suffice to say I've already achieved my true goal for the month. My other goals ... not so much.

Then today I decided to help my lack of writing by being really stupid and fetching a small TV from storage that nobody wants and hooking it up to Brother's PS2 so I can play Harvest Moon: It's a Wonderful Life again.

End result: Three days into video game. Wordcount for the day: 20. (I think.)

Something about this song - awesome vid not withstanding - makes me think of Justin. Especially now that he's all grown up and .... yeah. Yet another song I'd love to see a PR vid to.

So ... I've been feeling a bit anti-social lately. Depressed, I suppose. I think more than anything I'm frustrated because I don't seem to be getting anywhere. At least, not where I *want* to be. I'm trying, but ... After awhile, it starts becoming harder to keep trying. Because there's only so much rejection and lack of progress a person can take. I'm not at the point of feeling truly hopeless - thankfully - but frustrated and worn. It's grating.

( The past week or so in review, complete with babbling. )

Oh, and my paid LiveJournal account has finally expired. This only matters because I will miss my many icons. -Sulks- Dreamwidth is turning out to be better than I expected after my last experiment with it, but I still want more icons. And my Anime Faces mood theme. The kanji is nice, but not the same.

Today I plan to cheer myself up with mindless coding! Namely posting stories on AO3 and working on my website. (Coding is another 'zen' thing for me; I blame my inner graphic designer.) I also plan to stare at FtD and Cataclysm for awhile in hopes of thinking of ways I can torture people. That's always fun. Feeling Emo much? OF COURSE NOT.



* It is a strange but true fact that watching Bones makes me hungry. I have no idea why.
** I want someone to write me a fic where Hannah and Brennan are teasing Booth about having a threesome. Initially I was all for an actual threesome, but now that I know Booth's VERY Catholic and would never go for it, I'm more entertained by the thought of the girls tormenting him while he's horrified by the idea.