A Short Story

Writing is hard work.

Hard work, they say. But what isn’t hard work? How can anything not be hard work? One could argue that somebody lazing about is taking the effort to be lazy. Of course, arguing such a thing is pointless. I myself don’t consider lazing about to be hard work at all.

But anything you put effort into will always result because of hard work.

“Why not give it a shot?”

Those words linger in my mind. A friend of mine, or rather, my only friend, had showed me the details to a writing contest earlier, and I had immediately refused. Why should I give it a shot? Writing is hard work, and I’m a lazy person.

Besides, just because I’ve written before doesn’t automatically make me a good writer. I only write for fun. There’s no way I could win, I told her.

She rebuked me instantly. I turned her down again.

But honestly, I’m quite sure that there’s no way I could win a writing competition, because after all—

If I were to enter any competition halfheartedly, there’s no way I could win against those who tried their best.

Hard work pays off, after all.

-----

I honestly don’t think I’m that great of a writer. There’s nothing I excel at. If I were to write a story, it would most certainly be an amateurish attempt that couldn’t even match any real author I’ve never heard of.

So when I got home, I promptly forgot about the competition.

Or at least, I tried to forget about the competition. There was no way I could completely, instantaneously, forget something like that. I’m not a computer. I can’t delete my memories like computer files in an instant, nor can I manually drag them to the recycle bin located somewhere in my head, and then tell my brain to delete the file forever. That recycle bin would be located on the desktop of my computer, not in my head.

I toy around with the idea of having already won the competition; what would happen if I won, if I got second, if I lost. Who wouldn’t? People are always imagining some grand dream at one point or another. What if I won the lottery, what if I could turn back and redo some part of my life, stuff like that. It’s what makes us human.

“Does it really?” My friend asks. “I think wondering about “ifs” are a waste of time. Pointless, meaningless, whatever. Taking one of your examples, I would never think about whether or not I could go back and redo some part of my life. Life doesn’t come with a reset button, so it’s completely meaningless to think about such things.”

I agree. I don’t think about such things either.

“But following your logic, doesn’t that mean we’re not human, then?”

I ask if she’s ever thought about a hypothetical situation.

“Well, yes, but—”

Too late. I win.

-----

Despite all that, the thought of the contest refuses to leave my mind. I already knew the impossibility of my victory, and yet my mind still toys with the hypothetical situation that would never occur.

Perhaps I really should give it a shot, like my one and only friend said.

What a sad, friendless life I lead.

So, I procrastinated. Wasted time like it was nobody’s business. Played games for hours, hung out and chatted with my only friend, watched movies, everything and anything but writing.

There was no way I could win such a writing contest, I thought to myself. So why should I write? Why bother? People might say it couldn’t hurt to try, but there’s no point trying if my resulting loss is inevitable regardless of my efforts.

“Aren’t you just running away?” My annoying best friend asks.

I might be running away, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m lazy. So it’s impossible for me.

“Stop making excuses and give it a try. Come on, you can do it. Write a story for the contest already.”

But the excuses are true. And it’s not like the contest is going to become a life-changing event. Participate or not, it doesn’t make a difference in the end, because I can’t win. And if it doesn’t matter if I enter or not, then I might as well not even try.

-----

My friend earlier had said that life doesn’t come with a reset button. It’s completely meaningless to think about being able to go back and redo things, and I agree.

Life is not a game. That much, I’m pretty sure anyone has heard of. Being able to go back is only something you can do in a game. My friend says it’s because there’s no reset button, but I think it’s because life doesn’t end.

Perhaps it’s actually of both.

But see, whatever happens, life continues on. There are no credit rolls, no “The End”, no epilogue. Win the lottery or lose everything you’ve had, achieving or discarding your dreams—

Whatever happens to you, life goes on.

On and on, eternally.

“So are you going to write the story, then? If it doesn’t make a difference, you might as well enter the contest.”

I refuse for the nth time. By this point I couldn’t be bothered to count. I stopped counting after the first time. Or rather, I never bothered to count in the first place.

But see, it’s because it doesn’t make a difference that I won’t enter. It’s because I’m a lazy person and writing a story will take too much effort, I tell her.

“Sheesh, when did you get so lazy?”

Since forever.

“If I wasn’t your only friend, I probably would have given up on you already by now.”

I know that, I tell her. That’s probably why she’s my only friend.

What’s been left unsaid, however, is that I’m her only friend, too.

A pair of loners who can only seek respite in one another, because we have no one else.

-----

I used to have more friends.

That doesn’t mean that I used to have a lot of friends either, although it was certainly more than the one friend I have left now.

They were all smart people. We would sometimes hold intelligent conversations over things that others of our ages usually didn’t think of at the time, just for fun. We even solved a few paradoxes here and there when we had nothing else to do, although we already knew we probably weren’t the first to do so. We might be smart, but none of us are geniuses.

They were my good friends. Friends I could hold conversation with, friends I could rely on, friends I could trust.

I never really found the idea of having hundreds or even thousands of friends appealing at all.
Actually, for those who claim to have that many friends—

Can you really, truly call each and every one of them friends? To easily call so many people friends, I believe that to do so would be to lower the meaning of the word, mocking the idea of truly having friends.

Friends should be those that you have mutual affection for, those that you can trust. The meaning of “best friend” has long been lost in this society who can so easily call anyone a friend with one click of a button. A best friend, after all, is someone who you can trust your life with. Someone with which you are so close to, that the two of you understand everything about each other’s life. Someone so close that they have become a part of you, just as you have become a part of them. Someone with which you have a special bond with, one that can’t be broken easily.

Of course, perhaps I am contradicting myself, because those I used to be called friends—

I don’t even know if they are my friends anymore.

-----

Probably the only difference between my old friends and I would be that unlike me, they were all hard working.

They, who worked hard and I, who was lazy and did not—

They, who strove to be among the best, and became successful in our society, and
I, who was lazy and eventually locked myself away so that I wouldn’t have to deal with society—

It is no wonder that eventually a gap between us would widen until we could no longer reach each other.

They became too successful, and thus their status would not allow them to reach me.

I, who was looked down by society and thus my status would not allow me to reach them.
They were the perfect example of why hard work pays off, and I who could not handle stress and became someone cast away by society like some discarded rag—

The perfect example of what happens if we don’t work hard, as declared by society.

Society, which dictates so much of our life.

Why don’t I just work hard, people say. If I worked hard I could have been more like them, more successful, they say.

Well, I’m sorry, but if it were really that easy then wouldn’t everyone be successful?

I certainly tried many times before, and always failed, simply because it was impossible for me to work hard enough. Those stories where people endlessly work hard to overcome difficulties don’t apply to everyone; not everyone can handle it.

But society wants us to be able to handle it, and thus outcasts everyone who cannot.

“And that’s why you don’t wish to join the writing contest, isn’t it. You don’t want to join a competition for those who belong in society, since you believe that you never belonged in the first place. And if an aberration had won…”

Certainly, I don’t think I can deny that. But is that really all there is to it?

“I think only you would know the answer to that.”

Indeed. But right now at the moment it might really be all there is to it.

“But if that’s the case, why don’t you do me a favor? Enter the contest and submit something, anything. Not with the intention of winning, but simply because you can.”

In the end, I finally conceded to my friend.

But I’m not entering this contest just because I can.

I’m entering on a whim, just like always.

And at the very least, she’ll stop annoying me about it.

-----

The process of writing is hard work.

As the contest page says, a writer has so many things to worry about: plot, grammar, style, pacing, atmosphere—the list goes on. But the most challenging of all those things can be writing realistic, convincing, and relatable characters.

Certainly, these are probably all true.

Probably, most writers work this way. They need to decide on a plot, work on the style, figure out the pacing and the best atmosphere for their story, proofread their work after they finish, checking for mistakes, and who knows what else they do.

I say this because I don’t really think I’m like most writers.

For one thing, I’m not a serious writer in the first place. I don’t know how many times I’ve already mentioned this, but I write things on a whim. I don’t bother with worrying about all that.

I just write what I write.

I don’t worry about the plot; as someone who literally writes on a whim, why would I bother to think so much about a plot? I just write scene and let the story go from there. What happens next? If I don’t know, the story stops there, probably never to be touched again until I end up looking at it on a whim again.

Everything I do is on a whim. I don’t even proofread my own work after I finish. I do that while I write at the same time instead. Proofreading after I’m done take s too much effort. People are always saying to proofreading is a good thing, and I agree.

It’s just that, I can’t be bothered to do it.

How unreasonable is it to think that someone like me, a failure of a living creature, to think that I could not win a writing competition with this kind of mindset?

“Why should that matter? Didn’t you enter the contest on a whim, just because you could, rather than with the intention of winning?”

I suppose she’s right. I’m just complaining for the sake of complaining because I had to stop being lazy for a moment and put effort into something, even if it was done on a whim.

-----

In the end, I finished writing the story, and submitted it. It was a story about a lazy person who eventually entered a story into contest for a whim; a boring story. Clearly something written on a whim. A joke of an entry about someone who wrote a story as a joke of an entry.

The results eventually came in.

I didn’t win.

It was to be expected.

And life goes on.

-----

There really was no point in this meaningless story.

“Don’t you at least feel some sense of accomplishment for at least finishing a story?”

For something written on a whim, none at all.

“Aw, that’s too bad. Ah well. At least you got some more experience as a writer.”

A waste of effort, especially when I’m not a writer.

Days have already passed since the contest. I go on as usual with my only friend, until suddenly; an unexpected message appears in my inbox on the site I entered the contest in.

A message from an old friend of mine, one of the ones I wasn’t sure if they were friends anymore.

A message telling me how he had seen my joke of a story, saw it for what it was: Not something entered with the intentions of winning a contest, but something I had done on a whim.

He did not ridicule it. He did not laugh at me for it.

But he had praised me for it.

>>> You have talent,
It had said.

>>> It’s good to see you active again. We were all worried about you after we lost contact with you, you know?

But most importantly of all,

He hadn’t forgotten about me, had remembered well enough to know that it was I who had written the story.

>>> But you know, I think it would be best if you stayed yourself. Yes, you who cannot work hard but did things on a whim, that suits you most. And it is probably also your strong point, even if the rest of society would disagree with me.

As I sat there reading through the rest of the message—

For the first time in years, I cried.

-----

“So, I suppose this is goodbye, then.”

My one and only friend smiles sadly as she talks to me as if we’re never going to see each other again.

My one and only friend, who showed up and became my friend after I had lost everyone else.

My one and only friend, before the rest of my friends found me again.

And now it was goodbye. She was a loner who was not compatible with me anymore, with I who was no longer a loner again.

A sad, but gentle farewell.

A farewell that I simply could not accept.

After all, my dear friend, I say to her:

As my friend, are you not a part of me, and I a part of you?