Just A Couple of Burnouts: Notorious Notes

By
Nick Radford

Whelp, we’re still here folks. We’re addressing just a couple of burnouts. The world is still crazy, there’s still no wrestling except for the stuff provided by the largest companies in the world who can afford (and are clearly willing) to take the risk of holding empty arena shows. Specifically, WWE has somehow been deemed an “essential service” by the Florida governor — which I’m sure has nothing to do with Linda McMahon being in the president’s cabinet. So now they can continue putting all of their “independent contractors” at risk while most of us sit and home and lap it up because lord knows we don’t have any shows to be on.

Notorious Notes – Chapter 24: Just A Couple of Burnouts

Oof, that came off a tad grumpy, but sometimes it’s hard to be positive when people are dying while the corrupt rich stay rich. If there’s one thing that this COVID-19 pandemic has done, it’s highlighting the drastic failures of our government and social systems. While exemplifying the clear difference between the entitled few and the oppressed majority. But we’re not here to discuss the abhorrent lack of basic human rights available to people in the United States. We’re here to talk about my thoughts and experiences as an independent professional wrestler, so let’s do that.

I showed you the logo last time, but look at it again!

To recap from last week, I have been trying to use this time to start a podcast (Wrestlerotica on Apple Podcasts), to watch all 11 seasons and 2 movies of The X-Files (spoilers, I’m pretty far behind), start taking poem commissions and work out. In my last blog, I talked about working out by playing Ring Fit Adventure, which is incredibly fun. But I started craving a bit of a change. So over the past couple weeks, I have been going to a local park to run (while staying a safe distance away from others) and I even started busting out some card workouts.

The workouts involve where you draw a card and the color and value of the card determine what workout you do and how much of it you do. Though the opening paragraph may indicate differently, my mood has improved since I started running but it is hard to say whether it is the result of being in the sunshine, getting endorphins from running, or a mix of both.

I also mentioned in the last blog that the trend of indie wrestlers talking about how much they miss wrestling on social media.

It seems like a misuse of energy to me — and I still feel that way. Everybody copes differently, so some may not have the energy or bandwidth to put towards projects, but if you do think you have the energy for wrestling, I recommend trying to put that energy toward other creative outlets (if you can, of course). I personally don’t miss wrestling that much.

That may sound like a bit of a hot take, but I guess I was dealing with a lot of exasperation, frustration, and overall burnout in regards to wrestling, so while this is FAR from an ideal situation, I am at least grateful to take some time away from wrestling to clear my head, get caught up on some stuff I’d been putting off for a while, find other creative outlets, and just rest. For a while, I had a bit of a quandary about whether I’d want to come back to wrestling at all after this was all over but now that I’ve had about a month to purge, I’m starting to feel motivated to come back. The running definitely helps keep the motivation up. I guess this may help add validity to the old adage “absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

Just A Couple of Burnouts
I don’t know, here’s another picture of my cat. What else can I show you?

I don’t think there’s really a moral that I’m trying to get at here.

Things kind of suck in a lot of ways and the world is a mess. But hopefully, this will help inspire some positive change once everything is all over? Gosh, I hope so. I suppose my takeaway here is that absence truly can make the heart grow fonder. Sometimes we just need a break — from life, work, the people in our lives. Our hobbies and the things that we love in order to appreciate them to our fullest. The last thing we would want to feel like just like a couple of burnouts.

It’s okay to feel burnout, it’s okay to “lose your smile” in regards to a passion, a hobby, a job or towards your friends or family. We’ve felt like just a couple of burnouts! You have to be able to recognize that, be forgiving of yourself and the thing you’re feeling burnt out from, and learn the best ways to work through it from a mental health aspect. Even if you love something dearly, you can grow tired from being around it, taking a break for a while is a much better option than going through the motions with it.

Wash your hands!

The world is your burrito!

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