The day I became a hikikomori

XIII

I feel stress on my throat.

Let me explain it better: since last year, every time I feel stress or anxious I feel like there's something on my throat, and I'm choking a little bit.

When I felt it for the first time, I obviously thought it was COVID, and I kept thinking that until the fourth doctor who received me told me there was absolutely nothing there, and everything was just stress. That's when I decided to get a job and do something with my life. After that, this choking feeling has followed me intermittently.

I'm feeling it rn.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start with the beginning.

I've been buying and selling Funko Pops since chapter XI, and it's going pretty well: I have 60 figures in stock and I have my initial investment back, which I'm reinvesting constantly. Well, at least part of it, because the platforms I'm using to sell online, like my country's eBay and Amazon, take their time to give me the money I'm earning, so technically speaking, I've my investment back, but in reality I only have part of it, part I'm reinvesting over and over again.

But it's fine: I'm growing little by little; I've been taking a small part of my earnings every week—for now, the equivalent of my weekly salary at the call center but, considering that was only a half-time job, it's not that much, really, but, hey, this is way better than that—and depositing it on my savings account, so it's starting to grow once again, and that hadn't happened since I lost my job at the hotel—and I could give myself that salary, too, but I'd better reinvest it—I'm enjoying looking for new figures and investigating their value online; I've contacted a national distributor and ordered some pre-sales as a wholesaler; and I've been buying at eBay some figures that are extremely rare—or straight up unavailable—here in Mexico. They're still on my way, so I'll tell you later if that was a good deal.

Anyway, things are going pretty ok, and maybe if this keeps going like this, I could be able to make a living, and start living by my own.

Everything should be fine. But, as always, there's a part of me that doesn't let it happen.

Most of the times I buy a new figure, I have the feeling I made a terrible mistake, that I made a bad deal or bought a worthless figure, which I'll never sell, and I'll just end up with a ton of figures but no money.

Sometimes I get desperate and lower the prices so I can finally get rid of some perfectly good pieces just because I believe they're been a little too long on my shelf.

Also sometimes I make up straight up bad deals just because I get too desperate. Let me elaborate on this: a couple weeks ago, while I was looking for some deals at Facebook Marketplace, I found some guy selling some figures at clearance prices, so I got interested on a Ron Burgundy Funko from The Anchorman movie. He's in pajamas, like his little dog, Baxter, and I'm a big fan of Will Ferrell, so I bought it—even though I don't think people from my country really know or care about American comedians, so it was a bad deal from the start. The guy selling the Funkos told me to visit him at his house, and I went there. When I arrived, I noticed there was a sign in one of the windows. It read ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ collectibles. When he opened the door I asked him if it was a store, and he said yes and told me to come in. I did and I found a regular house with a lot of shelves filled with Funkos—and at that very moment, I came to the conclusion that was the life I wanted to live, finally I've found a job I actually want to do, but I digress. The first one I saw was one Midnight, from My Hero Academia. I asked him its price, and he told me it was a third of the price online. I thought it was a fake, but I checked it. It was in mint condition, and I didn't find anything that made me suspicions. It was a perfectly good figure at an incredible price. He, probably aware of my surprise, told me his family lived in the US, so he traveled there constantly. He would spend a couple days looking and buying all the rares and exclusives he already checked online, repacking them and sending them back to his house via FedEx or something. He showed me a picture of his last trip and his hotel room was filled with Funkos, hundreds of them. And that's why he could sell Funkos so rare in my country—but so common and cheap in the US—at those prices. I bought from him the Ron Burgundy, Midnight and Mei Hatsume—again, from My Hero Academia—and asked him for the prices of many more. He told me the more I buy the better the price he could give me. I went back home, investigated the prices I asked for, and only in 8 Funkos were worth buying. I came back and asked for them but some weren't there anymore, so I ended up buying some I wasn't really sure about just because I planned to buy 8, so I HAD TO buy 8, and obviously those ones weren't great deals.