The new year brings excitement of the unknown, and one’s determination to improve. The majority of New Year resolutions revolve around weight loss, or breaking a bad habit. My resolution? Learn to write. Writing is intense, and it takes a lot of guts. How does one convey personal thoughts, create fictional worlds, inspire others, and evoke emotion from a set of words on a page? How does one craft a story of love, fear, inspiration, and pain? I found the answers in a year the world would love to forget. I found a true positive in the year 2020: emotional expression through writing.
The year of 2020 was no picnic. A lot of people, myself included, had a very tough time in the year of the pandemic. Our family dealt with multiple losses, which hit me hard. Combining that with a world in chaos does not equal a quality mental state!
Towards the end of the year, I discovered a writing technique called “Morning Pages.” After waking up, I sit down in front of a blank sheet of paper and write whatever comes to mind until three pages are complete. It can be anything I want. On Monday it could be a pseudo-therapy session, and the next day a ‘To-Do’ list. This kind of writing organizes my thoughts to not dwell on the unnecessary things in life that I cannot control, which helps in processing my emotions. Throughout the year, I unknowingly internalized emotion, and did not realize the effect on my psyche. Writing things out really helped, which piqued my curiosity as to what else writing could do for me.
As I practiced different kinds of writing, I realized that I truly enjoyed it. Expressing myself through writing makes me happy. It became that long lost puzzle piece between my favorite pastimes and expressing myself.
Enter “Game Over Gimmicks”
This blog is the manifestation of my love of Pro Wrestling and Video games. I could talk for hours about either of them, and this outlet allows me to do that. Both topics have a lot in common. When wrestling and games are at their best, in my opinion, complex characters partake in fantastic stories with meaningful themes.
Take, for example, Lee Everett from Telltale’s “The Walking Dead.” As an escaped convict in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse, he must redeem himself through an orphaned little girl named Clementine. His complex backstory and the insane Walking Dead world makes for one hell of an emotional story. Experiencing that story for the first time is one of my favorite experiences as a gamer. If you haven’t played this, you owe it to yourself. It’s one of my favorite games ever.
Wrestling has complex stories and characters built into the art form. We wouldn’t have worldwide superstars like Dwayne Johnson and John Cena without wrestling. Currently, we have All Elite Wrestling perfectly blending the story with fun characters duking it out inside the squared circle. The story of Adam “Hangman” Page has been long, winding, and an emotional roller coaster. His multiple championship failures leading to an alcohol-laden depression, realizing his friends no longer have his back, and then uniting with the loveable losers in Dark Order has been the best story AEW has told so far. Dealing with failure, depression, and coming into your own is a relatable story to everyone.
I have a special place in my heart for a character driven story, and I’m now writing about my favorite mediums for those types of stories. Game Over Gimmicks is a pet project, one to explore and highlight the best parts of Video Games and Wrestling. Doing so helps me express myself in ways I previously repressed. Writing taught me a lot about myself, but the most important thing was finding out what I really wanted to do.
I want to write.