> blog> penspinning> 02 : ps memoir vol two- 13/04/2026 - |
CH3 - SeinekoNote that this is the second volume of my PS Memoir! Please read the first volume if you haven't yet. Anyways, continuing on from the start of 2019! When I got home, I was given the master bedroom! It had a big bed and closets for my soon to be pen collection. Graduation took place months ago, but I still got my certificate! My teacher hugged me when we met again and it was really sweet. For the next year, I would still be on painkillers and I couldn’t begin high school yet. Other than sleeping and therapy, I would eventually return to penspinning. In a Penstock livestream, I talked to someone about creating a community for us remaining spinners. It was then we created the Penstock Server. The following day, I woke up surprised to see over a hundred members mixed with ‘oldies’ and beginners alike. It turned out the hobby wasn’t nearly as dead as I thought and it made me really happy! From then, I transferred administration to the channel's owner. 
the beginning of the server! One thing I noticed was that oldies didn’t seem to like the channel owner, and every other message would have trolls posting stuff like pictures of their poop!? It was a bit difficult moderating but I was lucky to have Security/KB to help me! KB alongside many really nice oldies would always be a big help to me and the server, often recommending mods and giving so much advice. He would be my first of many penspinning online friends! The server became a bit more chaotic and the other admin ended up trying to break it before leaving. After cleaning, I asked for a new admin and the server was revamped, but the new rules restricted us from talking about different stores or communities. This was the first time I would get a bit sad as this ‘hidden’ world was the sole reason I was able to grow and learn more about pen spinning! Even though I wanted to infiltrate it (spy mission!), it still brought many people interested in the hobby. Our solution was to ‘secretly save’ beginners by giving them invites outside the ‘dictatorship’, bringing them into servers like The Workshop. In spite of all the weirdness and drama, it felt like a home that I built, giving me comfort as I spun and recovered at home (ehe). 
ty! still not sure how mentioning menowa was restricted orz Eventually I was caught siding with the UPSB spinners and was banned from my own server, but thankfully, I wasn’t alone anymore. It felt like there was this new, full community waiting for me, and I can finally feel at home! As I was introduced to the true side of the community, I would marvel at the works and histories of all the spinners I learnt about. For the first time, I spectated SpinFest and was completely mesmerised with the editing of the CVs and how unique everyone’s spinning was. I would end up showing everyone I knew about JEB's 2019 submission! I saw the aesthetics of the JapEn community and technicalities of the French. I learnt of pen spinning legends, tournaments, world cups, mod engineering, and was fascinated with everything I saw. I would watch those corny but cute little promotions like SpinPro’s ‘Love’ or ‘Once a Spinner, Always a Spinner’. Learning of all of these gave me so much joy in spite of what seemed like a difficult period. As of that time, I still felt like an outsider in the community, but it was something I really wanted to be a part of! 
and very very unique!! A big problem for me was not knowing what I wanted my spinning to look like. After asking oldies about their favourites while I watched solos, I found my two biggest inspirations. They were Ivabra and TUv4! I lost track of the amount of times I would listen to Mokou’s theme used in Ivabra’s Reach for the Moon Solo! Beyond his Around variations, I would also be inspired by TUv4's thumbross links, picking it quickly and loving how it felt on my fingers whilst creating a cool effect. Over time, I was able to create unique links on my own by playing around. These included basic fingercrossing from watching HoW’s tutorials and fingerswitches! Now that I had an idea for how to spin, I decided to do my first ever PenWish haul for my birthday! With the parts, I was able to make an Ivan, an Energel ST V2, an Ivabra V2 Subbed, a Coffeelucky MX, alongside other experiments. I was so obsessed with pen spinning at this point that I felt that I also needed to practice it while showering. There was this idea I had where if water flew against me while I spun, I would enter a meditative state of spinning to improve better. This gave birth to the invention: Shower Mod V1! It was disposable, quiet, pocketable, and for some reason the best thing I had ever spun. I later changed the barrel to Smooth Operators after hearing about them from Zefia! 
pw loot, coffee mx, ivabra 2 subbed, ivan, shower mod, mx, and stal! It was around this time that I also received an invite to a server called OPSD from Albert. I later found that this was my first pen spinning team! I was able to learn about the importance of smaller groups, improving with one another, sharing achievements, or just talking about life. It was gatekept, had goofy inside jokes (complexity style) and we even had our own symbols (- ). Team SK was another team I was in. I remember talking about my struggles and how the penspinning community became a kind of refuge. The team gave me virtual hugs and it reinforced my idea of how sweet the community can be. One day, we finally planned to make a 2nd collaboration which I wanted to edit. I was so amazed and mesmerised with the pen spinning CV editing culture that I knew I had to learn After Effects to create something cool too! 
frustrating but also fun!! After a hundred hours and with help from the team, I managed to edit my very first CV, the premiere still being of my favourite moments of the hobby. During that time, my favourite communities would be the Reddit Server, The Workshop, OPSD, SK, and later Atlantis. For the first time, it felt like I wasn't as lost anymore, and that I found myself in that community of what I once thought I would never see. At some point, the new Penstock admin would get frustrated handling the server, and I was able to become admin again. As the channel owner was distracted from other projects, I was able to free all the oldies that helped me in my journey! I really wanted to give back, so we made the server a place where learning materials were abundant, opening beginners to the larger community! 
the penstock community is free!!!!!!! Although it would get deleted in the future, the old Penstock Server was made as a place to help new spinners as much as possible while maintaining an approachable environment. A replacement server would later take its place while holding a similar philosophy called Planet Pen Spinning. Even as a Fenspinner admin, I’ve always liked its more casual nature and enjoy my interactions there! There was always something going on, like the time a 65 year old olympian argued with us if Drowsy was a peak spinner or not! The years 2020-2021 would be such an active time in the community due to the ongoing pandemic, allowing a lot of my generation to create many combos, projects and join online voice chats. Every week, there was seemingly a new collaboration being hosted by my friends and I would submit to all of them! I had so much friends I kind of lost track! (ehe) I was so obsessed with penspinning again that for my school project, I even made a presentation! The aim was to teach students about goal keeping through achieving one of their own. Although I wasn’t able to present, I had a lot of fun trying out strategies for learning, eventually reaching my goal of learning bakfall and top spins at that time! 
four revs is technically inaccurate but young me was trying okay!! Back to the community again, we would have a lot of little notation debates and wars between aesthetics and technicality! There was this odd saturation in the aesthetics space that even involved hand modelling contests and it was why I sided with the tech spinners at the time (ehe). It was then that me, Mumm3y, Yetus, and Pall would all challenge ourselves to join WT21! The breakdown I had planned took weeks of ideation, integrating PD FL Arounds with fingercrosses following around cardioids. Despite the effort, I lost my favourite mod at the time and was unable to refine it. I ended up submitting a gimmicky combo with parts of the original breakdown, using only my middle, ring and pinky fingers to execute it. In the end, although I wasn’t able to perform my best, I was still really happy to hear so much support from people like Padrace! It was really exciting being on that stage too, joining competitions and having my presence seen made it feel like I was in a sports anime (nya)! After participating, I thought it would be cool if we hosted our own tournament too! Planet Cup was odd, but I was glad that I could help new spinners through judging combos and assisting in their improvement. I remember during the first round, a spinner named Akinpea submitted a cool 1P2H combo. Unfortunately, due to his broken arm, he wasn’t able to perform to his full capacity. The nature of competitions can be really tough, but his effort really inspired me at the time. 
old planet logo and promos ideation space! In spite of how difficult it was to navigate a world that I felt I should've left, at that moment, I had everything I needed right then and there. All my friends, passions and goals have become tangible, an idea I thought that I had lost. After all those years seemingly seeing my friends disappear from me, this time it felt like I truly found a home (uwu). As good as it seemed though, as 2023 approached, I thought I would have to make a choice. Previously, I didn’t know if my health would allow me to go to University, but after my recent improvement, the opportunity was now in front of me. I would end up taking a long break from pen spinning. There was this large emotional weight that the hobby now shares with my sense of self but I had a habit of abandoning things when I felt they were becoming too close to me. For some reason, it felt like what I love was a finite concept, and that it would leave me before I would be able to. Like the friends I couldn't keep, it just felt like I didn't deserve all that love. I ended up giving up my favourite hobby as an excuse to mechanically succeed again in academics, convincing myself it wasn’t something I needed. CH4 - RounekoTwo years later in 2024, it was 3AM as I practiced for my upcoming Electrical Engineering exam. I would stare at nothing but these papers, but I couldn’t see anything I wrote. I was thrilled I made it to University, yet at that moment during my first year, I couldn’t seem to feel anything. 
practice tests bweh Pen Spinning is a funny little hobby. It’s a unique interest with a lot of quirks, but I didn’t really understand what it truly meant to me. It’s weird, useless, and needlessly difficult, yet it somehow became a part of myself. In that same body who still felt so lost and broken, it finally found a home for itself. It didn’t matter if it was impermanent, it was something I still loved right then and I knew I shouldn’t stop myself from making time for the things in my heart. At the end of that exam, I went to check the servers again and would encounter Mervo and Mumm3y telling me about another new glue mod meta. It was so silly but I loved the idea. Since that time, I started to return to spin more and more again, meeting new friends like Yishai (NZ spinner!), Syn, Eurifor, PJ, and so many others. I love them all so much... I found that so many things changed in that time too. After Fenspinner won WC22, technicality and hypermodern ideas would emerge and tilt would become a driver, teaching new generations about the community in this new era. I began making combos again experimenting with refining my previous cross materials while finding a new endgame BT. 
my nyanyafishy bt and upgraded collection!! WT25 also took place and it was so amazing witnessing the rise of Multipen. I would also watch i.suk’s 18 Year Solo and the clips at the end made me almost emotional, recalling watching his 10 Year Solo like it was just yesterday. I also caught up to so many collaborations and was even invited to SpinFest! New teams and small groups also emerged, my favourite being FPSB, or the ‘Femboy Board’. Spindy’s Cup from tilt also took place and today, Next Gen Cup (NXGC) from Avisuper and Skerts is having it's first round. Monthly international collaborations also takes place now due to the amazing effort of Silva! At the end of the year, I made two new combos focussing on having fun, trying links that felt nice on my hands. My passion for editing also got reignited and I collected as many CVs as I physically could to make a library to watch all day! I was then also invited to edit for the Spin Awards, which was a huge honour for me! I still recall when I watched these awards years ago, looking up to all these spinners and wanting to be in the community. 
ty again mumm3y, skerts for 3D and disk for organising!! Through it all, I still think and wonder if I can finally call myself a part of this silly little hobby… PostfaceHi again, it's me from the present! This project started in 2020 but I never had the confidence to fully write and publicise it. Thanks to my friends, I decided to finally share my story! I couldn’t include every single detail of course, rather just ones that were notable in my penspinning journey. Although I've grown a lot, there's days where I can still feel so lost, or moments I wonder why I'm still here. The sun can be so bright, yet some nights can bring back a longing for that time I went to sleep… but I want to keep trying my best, I want to keep spinning, and I want to keep being squishy no matter what! From the bottom of my wobbly heart, I want to thank everyone for taking care of me. I feel I really owe it to the community of this silly little hobby (ehehe). Other than writing about spinning, I want to make more combos this year too. Editing motion and 3D would always be something I want to keep creating! One day, I might also make my own collaboration! But for now, please take care too, okay! This was the pen spinning memoir that I hoped my other self didn’t share. Thank you so much for reading! Here's some things I might write about in the future in no particular order! As of now, may we meet again in another time and place (nyawa)!
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