Young Writers Society

As of now, I am now sitting in the office where my dad works, under the pressure of making up an essay about anything. Nobody is holding me at gunpoint or anything like that, though. I just thought that I might as well be productive while I wait for my dad to finish whatever he's doing. I could continue the the new horror story I am making, but knowing how slow I am at writing up even hundred-word stories, it would probably lead to nothing completed. That's why I'm deciding to write an narrative essay instead, since all I have to do would be to pull a real event out of my memories. For this quick essay, I shall narrate to you guys my experience of selling a fidget spinner to a friend, tell the lessons I learned from it, and show how they are relevant to us as writers and human beings.

In the last few days of my trip to Hong Kong, I bought a fidget spinner. To those fortunate enough to not know, a fidget spinner is one of those trendy toys that all are all the rave these days. They're like the Gangnam Style, the hoverboard, the Nae Nae and the dab, in the sense that they suddenly blow up in popularity, then slowly decline and die as another trend takes its place. All you do with the fidget spinner hold it in your fingers, give it a little flick, and you've got yourself a spinning spinner. It's simple. 

The one that I bought was a triune spinner that costed 20 HKD, or 127 PHP, or about 2.5 USD. Although its dull metals and faded-white color made it look less vibrant than the ones I saw on the internet, I thought this was still a good deal. Unfortunately, I was not planning on keeping this toy for long. I only bought it to feel how it feels to have a spinner in my pocket. After that, this spinner would be sold off, or if I could not find a buyer, destroyed on video.

Fortunately, I was able to find a buyer. It was my fat, gay, and pervy classmate, who was a close friend of mine. He actually isn't gay, but pretending to be gay, because he and I and the rest of our gang are a bunch of retards. He is fat and pervy, though. I saw his message in the gang's group chat, saying that he was looking to buy a fidget spinner. I, being the shrewd, greedy fox, capitalized on that opportunity and offered him the one that I owned. That was how I got myself a deal: three hundred pesos for my spinner, to be exchanged on the gang's meetup two weeks before the first day of school.

I found out a day later that this spinner actually glowed green in the dark. So that's why it looks like this! I realized. I informed my friend about it, to which he showed his excitement by spamming the chat with gibberish. He was even more pleased with the deal that we made.

I brought the spinner on the day we agreed on, but much to my frustration, my friend didn't bring the money. Nonetheless, I let him borrow the spinner. It made him pretty happy, because then he finally got a good look at what he was paying his money for. That day, we agreed that we would finally make the transaction on the first day of school.

At two days before school, however, I found out that the spinner couldn't spin as well as it used to. There was more friction whenever I would spin it, making it spin for a shorter amount of time. The rusted metal bearings made the spinner look less attractive, too. This isn't fit for sale, I thought. On the next day, I set out to disassemble and clean it. My table was decked out with all the things needed for the maintenance: olive oil and a toothbrush to remove the rust (Filipinos like to improvise), alcohol to clean out the other muck and grime, safety pins to reach smaller places, and lots of kitchen towels. I sent my friend a message, telling him that I was "working my ass off tryna maintain your spinner," and a picture of my maintenance work after that. At that time I didn't know what I was trying to achieve with that condescending remark, but to my surprise, he appreciated the update.

"Thank you daddy," he said, with three heart emojis at the end.

"You better bring the 300 or I'm sticking the spinner up my ass," I replied.

"You're so hardworking, keep it up." Then the crying emoji.

As I continued fixing the spinner, he told me that I was seriously the best, and offered me a blowjob on top of the agreed payment. I turned him down and told him I wasn't gay. Feeling bad, he then offered to throw in an additional hundred pesos. This was flattering to me, but I told him that that was too much. "I just like seeing satisfied customers," I told him, relating to the satisfaction he joy and excitement he showed earlier.

When I was done, I sent him two pictures of the newly-cleaned spinner. Though still dull, its metal bearings and cores were freed of rust and grime, allowing it to spin longer and more smoothly. "Fucking hot," he replied. "You're the best, outvaders."

And the rest is history. On the date we agreed on, he gave me the money, I gave him his spinner. I was happy with the money I got, but he, with his new spinner, was more so than I. Those were my experiences in my short-lived business as a fidget spinner seller.

I was reminded in this experience that in business, it is a must to keep a good relationship with your clients or business by constantly being in touch with them. This is in order to prevent the customer's interest from waning, and to ensure that they come back for more. Had I forgot to update my friend about the spinner, he would have taken this transaction for granted. He would not have been as happy about it, and our friendship would not have been strengthened; he would just give the money, and I would just give my spinner, then that would be all that there was to that exchange.

This serves true in art and writing as well. I've seen YouTube channels that uploaded popular content once "die," or suddenly stopped uploading videos. Some of them came back and tried to revive their channel by uploading once more, but it was too late. Their view count was abysmal. The subscribers had already lost interest.

I also feel as if this disconnect is happening to me too. Lately, I haven't been publishing any flash fiction, or visiting the forums, or being active in general. While I know I'm grinding hard to complete the stories I have lined up, I feel the effects of this disconnect. No one really talks to me here, not a lot of people like my wall posts, I'm not very talked about, etc. Due to my lack of interaction here, I feel as if I'm little in this community. It's lonely. That's partly the reason why I decided to start writing quicker and more straightforward essays like this: to be able to constantly engage with my readers and fellow YWSers through literary works.

Our life as humans is all about having relationships. It's like that because we are all born as social beings into a large society of social beings. In order to live our life on Earth to the fullest, we must grow the relationships we have with other people now, while forming new connections as well. After all, what's the point of writing stories when you can't get anyone to be your readers?