Notorious Notes – Chapter 23: Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie 2020 Quarantine-y
Here we are, blog number two of quarantine. I legit have not left my home for anything besides groceries in three weeks. I have not seen another human, aside from those in the immediate vicinity of my home or at the store, in three weeks. During this time, I have continued my workout routine of playing “Ring Fit Adventure” for 45-60 minutes per day. This continued with consuming the meals from my meal plan. I spend a lot of time playing the freshly released “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” and trying to find a creative outlet or two to tide me over. Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie 2020 Quarantine-y has overcome us all.
Anticipating that this could last into May, and since it’s looking like my May bookings are even drying up now, I have also challenged myself to watch all eleven seasons and two movies of “The X-Files” during the thirty days of April. Inspired by my #31MoviesIn31Days challenge, where I watch thirty-one horror movies during the month of October, I wanted to try something similar with spooky television shows but I couldn’t quite figure out how it would translate to the TV so I consider #13SeasonsIn30Days to be a bit of a test run to see if it’s even possible to watch that much television in a month.
(I’m counting the two movies as separate seasons, I know it’s kind of cheating, but it’s still like 180 hours of content so give me a break!) If this goes well, I will bust out a similar challenge in October and try to pull off #13SeasonsIn31Days. Wish me luck!
Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie 2020 Quarantine-y:
Brings Out A Podcast
You may consider this burying the lead a bit, but I had to set the scene a bit for where I am mentally before I could divulge perhaps the biggest bit of news: I started a podcast! It’s nothing fancy, I’m still learning how to play around with and clean up the audio, and it’s generally less than five minutes but I do indeed have a podcast that I try to post weekly to Apple Podcasts! It’s called “Wrestlerotica” and it’s literally just me reading one of my world-famous erotic fan-fiction poems. I try to give a little intro, and maybe in the future, I’ll start divulging some of the stories behind the work before I just jump into it, and then I read the poem.
As of this writing, I have uploaded two whole episodes. The first one featured a brand new poem I wrote that week. It served as a PSA about washing your hands. The second episode allowed me to dive back into my library and revisit the first-ever erotic poem I ever wrote about Brian and Kevin Cook, simply titled “The Cook Bros.” I have set this up in a way where it challenges me to produce content and write poems more frequently than every time I have a booking. Especially since I literally have no future bookings planned at this moment. But it also allows me to dip back into my old works if I run into a bit of the old writer’s block.
Commissions for Custom Poems
As I mentioned in the last episode of this blog, I have also opened myself up to taking commissions for custom poems (details below). One of the things I ask when taking an order is if I may post the poem on my social media in the future, anticipating that I may eventually want to use those works for podcast content. But in the meantime, the customer gets that bit of erotic artwork to themselves.
A Wrestling Purge
As far as actual wrestling goes, I’m kind of taking this opportunity to do a sort of wrestling “purge,” if you will. I haven’t really consumed any wrestling media aside from what appears on the front page of Reddit. And what I see while scrolling through Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. I have specifically avoided posting any wrestling content to my own social media, as I think there is plenty of that out there while nothing new is happening.
Why focus on what CAN’T happen when we could be focusing on what CAN happen, you know? I see a lot of folks on social media mentioning how much they miss wrestling. Which I get it…to an extent. I did a podcast that came out this week called “The Seattle After Party Session” where Carl Randers and I conversed with host, Daryl Ducharme, for about an hour without really mentioning the COVID-19 situation or any negative energy really.
One of the things I mentioned when Daryl asked me about how I deal with Imposter Syndrome. The concept of “diversify your identity”. This translates to “don’t put all your self worth into one aspect of your life, because that aspect might not be fulfilling all the time.” So instead of being sad that one aspect of my identity can’t happen right now, I am trying to view this as an opportunity to work on other aspects that I may have neglected. Or, in the case of podcasting, learn something entirely new.
What to do?
Oh, I guess your unreliable narrator has caught up on VICE’s “Dark Side of the Ring” series. But I promise that’s the only other wrestling-related content I have consumed since this quarantine began. I will watch WrestleMania because a) I never miss it anyway and b) boyyyy it’s gonna be a weird one. So I guess I am still kind of consuming a small (very satisfying) amount of wrestling content.
On one final note, I think it is EXTREMELY important to note that this is just me. This is the amount of productivity that I can muster at this point. There are still days where I do not feel like I have the energy or mental capacity to accomplish anything. I just end up watching TV and/playing Animal Crossing – or worse, anxiety scrolling through social media all day. My point is that everybody copes in their own way, everyone has their own limits for productivity through traumatic events.
Do not let anybody shame you for not being as productive as them, and do not shame anybody for their level of productivity. We are living through a worldwide state of emergency. And we are all in this together so do what you need to survive and stay healthy. We need to take care of each other the best you can. This was an Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie 2020 Quarantine-y for 2020 blog entry.
Wash your hands!
The world is your burrito!
Social Media:
- Facebook: NickIsRadford
- Instagram: @NickIsRadford
- Twitter: @NickIsRadford
- Venmo: NickIsRadford
- Paypal: paypal.me/NicholasRadford
- Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/NickIsRadford
- ProWrestlingTees: prowrestlingtees.com/nickradfordcatford
- Amazon Wishlist
- Commissions: PayPal/Venmo – $5: Poem, $10 Poem + Recording; Include topic and if I have your permission to use it for social media content.
