Ben Hughes, a 22 year-old failure, has never known success. He's heard of it and he's dreamt of it, but it seems to have always slipped through his fingers. Taunted by his mother, and judged by the world, Ben decides to take matters into his own han...
At the time of writing it, I was in a slightly strange place and in a slightly strange mood. I'd just finished my final year of secondary school (or high school - whichever you prefer) and I was (and still am) awaiting my final results, before I (hopefully) head off to university. There's a lot of uncertainty in the previous sentence and I felt a lot of uncertainty in the period between leaving school and writing this story. I've essentially been going to school since I was five years old and I am now eighteen years old, so school and education have occupied a very large part of my life. To leave it all behind and then prepare myself for university and the world of work is daunting at worst and exciting at best, but to get to that stage is a whole other process.
Ben talks a lot about having employability skills and a need for a driving licence and a bunch of other necessary things in order for you to just get to the interview stage. He also places this huge emphasis on being a graduate and having a degree. This story is a satire about graduates. At least, that was what it was meant to be at the very beginning, when I planned it all out. Ben was going to be a bit of a clueless graduate and he was going to have trouble processing and navigating the world of work. There was going to be the expectation that everyone gets a job and everyone makes lots of money, which I thought was the case before I wrote (typed) this story.
It turned into something more as 'Ben' and 'Pepe el' and all the other characters started to take form, and my original plot got lost somewhere along the line. 'Junk Mail' was still satirical, but there was more of an emphasis on what a person loses in the process of trying to achieve success, and trying to meet the expectations that perhaps our parents, the people we work with and we ourselves create when it comes to things like work and education. There was also a new emphasis on what could happen when we grow up too quickly (without first accepting and discovering who we were to begin with), which can lead to us losing a version of ourselves.
I haven't even started university yet but I know that even in the two years leading up to my final school exams, they were all I could think about. I had this idea that they were all that mattered and getting to university was the next step that I absolutely had to reach, and then work would follow that. I took part in extracurricular activities and did all sorts of team building, leadership enhancing things that tired me out and weren't always enjoyable (though many of them were), and all I was doing it for was the eventual success that would come out of it. I think we all want some sense of stability, and for me that stability came from (and to a large extent, still does come from) education and the supposedly guaranteed job prospects it will eventually lead to. But in the process of all of that, family and friends and everything else were either put on hold or became irrelevant which is not good. I suppose, in the end, 'Junk Mail' managed to draw those thoughts out of me and put them on paper (or your screens).
Ben loses himself in his ambitions and, in a rather extreme ending, he loses his best friend too. It takes losing a loved one to restore Ben into a person that begins to consider other aspects of his life beyond just success in the workplace. He doesn't turn back into a naive guy who immediately begins trusting everyone who's done him over but by the end of 'Junk Mail' he sees life through a more rounded perspective. That's something I think I'd like to aim for at the end of all this - university, getting a job, achieving goals that I've set for myself and so on. For you, the readers, I think 'Junk Mail' is supposed to highlight the importance of the other things we want for ourselves or sometimes take for granted as we start working our way towards success. 'Junk Mail' is in no way trying to undermine a person's desire to achieve success because it's a wonderful thing to be doing. It's just exploring the idea that we need to try and strike a balance in life for our own mental wellbeing. I don't think we can ever really find a perfect balance of work and family and ambitions and time for ourselves because circumstances change and we change, but I like to try and find as near a perfect balance as I can in my life. I've found that I'm happier when I'm not just focusing completely on the end goal which is success of any form, and that's something Ben finds to be the case at the very end of the story as well.
Success and the want to achieve it doesn't have to be restricted to things like education and work. I know that I haven't been on Wattpad for a while (because I've been focusing only on school) and that when I did return, I was kind of lost. Some of you may have read 'set free' and 'Sincerely, Red' which employ completely different styles of writing. They're reflective in a more poetic way but 'Junk Mail' is all sarcasm, exaggeration and satire... it's reflective and thoughtful but in a different way. And it didn't pick up at the same rate that the other stories did, because there's generally more of an audience for stories like 'Sincerely, Red' and 'set free' on this site, which is perfectly fine. But it scared me at first. I feared that stepping out of my usual writing style and writing in a genre that would not necessarily be met with the same response as the other stories would mean that I wasn't doing it right or the story was bad or that it just wouldn't work. That might be true. The plot needs to be tightened in certain areas. Ben is a hard character to get used to. Some of the things said in this story are kind of tongue-in-cheek and might not be met with the most positive response. These thoughts meant that I initially tried to write in the same style as I had previously to achieve the success that I wanted, but it didn't work and I couldn't force myself to write like that for 'Junk Mail'. And it turned out okay. I got attached to writing in Ben's voice and it was a fun experience that helped me improve as a writer, which is the important part. I hope that's something that all of you will aim for - having fun no matter what it is that you do, no matter what it is that you're aiming for.
And there are certain people that I'd like to thank for helping me reach the point where I can accept having fun as being another form of success. Everyone who read 'Junk Mail' needs to be thanked because seeing reads and votes and comments was fun so thank you.
SharonHonyumptewa is also a person I have known and respected for a very long time (I don't know how long because I'm not very good with time and measuring it, but it is a very long time). She's someone who's not only commented and voted on every chapter of practically everything I've ever written and posted on this site, but someone who's also made me think about the things Ben has done or said or felt in every chapter. She has very much helped to shape who Ben became at the very end and I always look forward to reading what she has to say, so her comments served as motivation for writing this story.
I'd also like to thank darthallow who I haven't know for very long, but who's comments made me feel happy inside. And thank you to Vecsfire for leaving such funny comments on 'Junk Mail'. They made me laugh.
My family and friends and English teacher (who I won't name) also served as inspiration for some of the scenes in this story so they should be thanked too.
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