A Short-Lived Retirement

Yeah, so just in case you haven't figured out by now, I'm coming out of retirement. I know, didn't I just retire a few months ago, you Brett Favre you? Well, for one, if you call me Brett Favre, I'll punch you in the nose. Two, well... I don't have a two.

So why come out of retirement now? Why even go into retirement and make a big deal if you're coming out again in less than a year? Well, a few things. One, at the time, I was tapped for ideas and didn't really have the time to put thoughts to Notepad or the desire to be on a schedule anymore. Of course, it didn't help that I was still RPing in TEAM, EPW, A1E, NFW and LVW. Having that much of a workload, even with the given sparsity of results and RP periods, was a bit too much for me as I was still adjusting to married life and enjoying things like my Wii or watching copious amounts of wrestling and blogging about it on my other blog (bee-tee-dubya, ARE YOU READING IT YET, BITCHES?).

Two, to come out now, well, don't laugh, but my interest in "real" wrestling has sparked an interest in eW again, especially listening to the gamut of promos from following various feds from the WWE down to Chikara, some great (CM Punk, MVP, Austin Aries, Chris Jericho) and some of them terri-bad (the Young Bucks, Tyler Black, Batista, Amasis). The former inspire me to aspire to their greatness and the latter inspire me to show the bad promos how the fuck it's done.

Three, well, judging PTC's GTT7 got the fires going. Even though I prefer writing the FW/wrestling promo style over the PTC/narrative story style, I still feel like I have one more story to tell over there, which will most certainly come in GTT8 if/when it happens.

So, what does this all mean? Where am I going? Well, for now, it'll just be EPW and maybe spot appearances elsewhere. I don't want to make the mistake of spreading myself too thinly and then burning out again. When I get back in the groove or get more time, who knows. Maybe a return to A1E, my ancestral home, will be in order. Maybe I'll try NFW again, or give Billy F's NLW a shot.

It also means a more concerted effort to try and get some content going for the blog and to read more e-fed related stuff. I felt bad that I never got Project Discovery Channel up and running like I wanted to. I always thought it would be an easy content grab even if I wasn't following e-feds like I was during the height of the blog. That'll still be on the table, as well as a lot of EPW-related stuff.

So yeah, I'm officially back. Please, hold your tomatoes until I post my first RP :p

This is it

With a heavy heart but a clear mind, I am announcing my retirement from active competition in the game of e-wrestling/e-fedding/fantasy wrestling.

I'm sorry to all the heads of feds that I'm in now for quitting now, but writing has become more of a chore than a release. I also have not been consistently writing RPs that I've been completely happy with for a long time now. It's too much of a struggle for me to continue creatively, and even moreso a chore for me to read through a card. The latter is unfair to everyone else in the fed whom I am up against and to those who've written those matches and segments.

I do leave with a lot of good memories and a lot of lessons that have and will continue to help me in life. I've also met a lot of good friends through this game that I am grateful for having come into my life. I would like to say that I'm not shutting myself off from any of the eW hubs, FW or PTC, that I go to, so I'll still be around. I've always found it asinine that people who leave the game also leave the community. We're all friends for the most part and we all like each other (or at least tolerate each other).

But I would be remiss if I didn't thank the many people with whom I've been involved in the almost decade I've been playing this game.

Thank you to:

- Roger Albrecht, Jarret Aubry,(A1E) Dan West, Bob Rodriguez and Bill Dempsey (MBE), who welcomed me into their respective feds as a super-green rookie and tolerated my bitchiness in my early days

- The guy who handled the Canadian Hitman (don't remember his name) for actually recruiting me into A1E and getting me started

- Ryan Poole (Liquid Snake), who was my first real friend and e-fed confidant

- Dave Brunk for taking a chance on the JA character and letting me find my spark again in EPW

- Chad Merritt for allowing me his site to work creatively with TEAM

- For everyone who ever participated in a UXW or TEAM card, especially Brian Jenkins, the first and only UXW Champion, and Adam Shinder, who took the reins of TEAM from me when I couldn't handle it anymore

- And finally, to all the people I've faced, befriended or even disagreed with over the years, especially Jon Katz, Phil Banet, Lindz, Pierre Hyde, Fergus Looney, Sean Edmunds, Mikey Nunes, Nicholas Kamuda, Chris Davis, Diego Ibarra, Kevin Healey and Ross Fynmore. If I didn't mention you by name, please don't feel slighted. It's probably on account of my bad memory :p

However, despite retiring from active handling, the blog will not be going anywhere. While I won't be doing the regular news/show reviews etc., I am going to make an attempt to continue Project Discovery Channel and keep the interviews alive. However, it'll only be handler interviews. I feel like I'm not well-equipped to do anything in-character anymore.

So, there it is. Of course, as with real wrestling, e-wrestling retirements are never really all that permanent. Will I ever be back? Maybe, maybe not. However, for now, it's goodbye and thank you. My life would never have been the same without this game and all the wonderful people in it.