A Day in the Wrestling-Doing Life: Friday, May 18

In honor of my blog revival, here is a second post for 2018!  Today I will take a moment to relay a particular wrestle-doing filled day I just had, a "Day in the Life Of...", if you will.  This day was both typical and atypical!

Today is Sunday.  Let me tell you about Friday.  Friday was the day I wrote my "blog revival" entry.

The day started out with me riding my bike across town, to set up camp in a cafe located near our Big Studio.

Friday morning was spent chatting variously online with Lana Luxor, Ursa, and Hanz, as I worked on getting our video store catalogue caught up with recent releases.  Up came the topic of blogging, and, to put my money where my mouth was, I jumped in, now inspired, and a wrote a blog entry about writing blog entries.

Then I headed off to the Big Studio to meet with Ursa for some mini-filming.  Ursa has been collecting a few nifty leotards for her own wrestling adventures, and she decided to put on a fashion show of her own to show them off.  So, we filmed a Fashion Show video!



Sporting her shiny tights throughout, Ursa displayed 3 different leotards, plus a 4th outfit that excited her greatly.    (Ursa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ursafierce)

Following Ursa's attire adventures, Sweetie Dreams arrived at the studio with a training partner, and I coached them through reviews of triangle chokes from a variety of directions.  Sweetie proved to be quite apt at wrapping her legs around her training partner's neck from the front, back, side, underneath, and then some.

Feeling pumped, Sweetie also requested a competitive match against our wily male wrestler Rizzo.  So, we'll work to get that one set up and see what happens.  (Sweetie Dreams on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sweetiedreamsbb)


After the practice session, I jumped back on the bike and rode across town as fast as I could to meet Orlandoe at the Small Studio, where she was having a session. 


And, indeed, folks, Orlandoe is back and is wrestling.  She's been training harder than ever and is excited to be doing mixed matches.  However, she is not doing videos at this time, FYI.

Orlandoe and I chatted for a bit, and she was in very good spirits.  But that catching-up couldn't last long, because I had to go *back* to the Big Studio, ASAP, to meet Hanz and Taylor for a video shoot.

When I arrived at the Big Studio, Hanz and Taylor were steeling themselves for their "Iron Match" aka their continuous 60-minute long competitive mixed wrestling match.  This was a match I would be filming for Hanz's studio: Hanz Vanderkill's Mixed Battle Theatre.

We set up the timer, and off they went.  Taylor has *much* less wrestling experience than Hanz, but she is very athletic, and she made it through the whole hour-long match without taking any prolonged rest periods.  There would be only a brief pause here or there to fix hair, reset after a submission, etc.

The studio had no windows and no air conditioning, so, needless to say, it was a sweaty time for these two.  Here's a photo of them from after the match:

And while I'm at it, here are links to Hanz and Taylor on Twitter, respectively:  https://twitter.com/hanzvanderkill  and https://twitter.com/Taylor_DM_

Once that filming was done, I headed home, where I then chatted online with Lana Luxor and Sweetie Dreams, as we set up for a competitive match for them.  I also confirmed competitive matches with Aralia vs Taylor as well as a Lana vs Taylor (a rematch).  All 3 of these matches are slated to take place on the same day: Monday, May 28.  And I anticipate all 3 of them to be very competitive, indeed!

 

And since I hadn't mentioned it yet, if you are looking for either Lana or Aralia on Twitter, they are here respectively:   https://twitter.com/LanaxLuxor  and  https://twitter.com/araliadm

Whew, ok, and I think that was it!  It was a big wrestle-doing day, and I myself hadn't done any wrestling at all!  (that will be for tomorrow morning, when I get up to go to early morning training)

So, I will leave it all at that for now.  I'd say that day was typical in that it was pretty wrestle-doing-filled.  But it was atypical because my days are always fairly varied in their specifics!  For instance, I didn't do any filming for the Doom Maidens studio, nor did I release any videos, or....? 

But anyway, anyway.  Enough from me for now!  Time to post!

Blog Revival! New wrestlers, 2018 updates, a webcast panel?

Hello Blog!  Hello Readers!  It has been WAY too long!

I see here that my last update was regarding our November 2017 Live Filming Event.  And here, now, today, it is mid-May 2018.  That is too long a stretch without a blog entry.  And yet there are many reasons for this absence from the blog-o-sphere:

I have been buried under unending tons of video footage, I moved to a new house, I have been slammed with home renovations for the past 5 months, I've been playing catch up with making video release pages for the Doom Maidens website, I've been making a further commute to our big studio, and I've been working a good bit with the newcomer wrestlers.  And, so, my attentions have been elsewhere!  Alas, the poor blog had been utterly forgotten.

Until now!

A blog revival?  For real?  I mean, for real?  Why now?  Well, I'll tell you why now.  It has to do with our newcomer wrestlers.

We have a lovely group of new local wrestlers in our crew here in New York City.  Two of our rookies, in particular, who have been very active and energetic and dedicated have been Lana Luxor and Ursa Fierce.  Both of these ladies went from 0 to 60 with the wrestling-doings, jumping into the deep end "officially" only about a year ago, and quickly developing as they find their footing in the wrestling realm.

Ursa & Lana (on bottom), being hazed during our Christmas celebration.

They inspired my blog revival because I was hoping to inspire them to start blogging on their own.

 Lana has been able to travel and tour a bit in the last year's time, and so she's been able to meet new people around the country: producers, fans, other wrestlers.

A relatively quick intro to the realm.  And, consequently, a great way to start getting to know people and to be known in turn.  She's gotten quite a crash course, and she's handling it very well!  But is there a good way for her to share her thoughts and experiences from this first, formative year?

Ursa, however, has not been able to travel at all, and she's only been able to work with us here locally in NYC.  I've had the chance to observe her develop as a wrestler, but, due to my current workload (everything), I haven't been able to document this development as much as I would like, or as much as I had been able to do with other newcomers in the past.

Ursa's got a great attitude and is making much progress, but how, I wondered, could she become more known to people?

Oh, right: blogging!

Or vlogging, or podcasting, or webcasting.  But more on that in a bit.

When I first started blogging, it was like blogging was the thing to do.  VeVe maintained a blog, Hanz maintained a blog, Amazon Annie had one, and other ladies did as well.  I had this blog and then my bondage wrestling blog, among others beforehand. Web journaling was a thing for a while.

But blogging does require a lot of time and dedication.  Composing blog entries can be time consuming.  You don't realize this much when it's just something you do.  BUT when you add Twitter into the mix, the blog starts to move toward the back burner.  The wonderful "micro-blog" of Twitter lets you make quickie updates on the fly, which frees up more time for doing other things.  Time that might be otherwise consumed by composing a more standard blog entry.

So, as micro blogs like Twitter free up time -- people can shoot out quick updates and then move on -- that time quickly gets consumed with more doings.  More filming, more image-making work, more real-time conversing.  Less time composing a "static" long-form blog entry.  Less time, less, and less, and then the blog is totally, yet innocently, forgotten.

My blogging colleagues don't maintain their blogs.  They are just too busy.  But when they DID maintain their blogs, they wrote quite a lot.  And people liked to read those blogs.

But maybe our newcomers would like to give blogging a try.  Long-form blogging is a great chance to get to know a person a bit more personally than short-form "micro-blog" Twitter status updates.  Tweets alone are so short, brief, sometimes vague.  Even with the increased character limit on Twitter, a Tweet cannot compare to a long-form journal entry when it comes to familiarizing oneself with a person.

Don't get me wrong, I love Twitter.  Love, love, love it.  But I think Twitter really works best for people who are already known in some way.  People who have a body of work somewhere else, besides Twitter.  A newcomer with only a Twitter presence as fan-outreach -- I'm not sure that will do it when it comes to the "getting to know you" aspect.

So, to blog?!

Or webcast / podcast / vlog?

Frankly, I personally think blogging is the "easiest" and most accessible.  However, granted, if you are not a natural writer, composing a journal entry can be daunting.  If you prefer to speak, rather than write, a vlog (video blog) might be the way.  Or a podcast (audio only, like a radio show).  But, due to the current nature of the internet, I think audiences have an easier time accessing text content, compared with video or audio.  Also, creating text blogs doesn't require equipment other than the computer; meanwhile, vlogs and podcasts require additional video and audio recording equipment.

Granted, I know a lot of people use their phones to record video and audio, but then that video and audio needs to be uploaded somewhere, stored, and distributed.  And I still think text is easier to share, at this current time.

ANYWAY.

I'd love it if the rookie ladies could blog a bit!

That said, we are also talking about having them come on for a podcast, since it seems they may prefer to speak rather than type.  The podcast would be audio only, and then I would like to transcribe it to text form afterwards.

And Hanz is interested in reviving his blog too, as we speak of all of this.  He is a big fan of podcasting, and he's experienced in that arena.  So, maybe he blogs, maybe he podcasts.   But something will happen.

Mark my words, readers, I will keep on it!  ... and as for me, I will keep up my blog revival as well.  Time management, let's do it!  And now, off I go, to go back to real-time chatting for scheduling and coordinating and planning.  Here's to more long-form storytelling to come...