“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Ernest Hemingway
I cannot believe it has been a year since I officially started Game Over Gimmicks. Talk about a wild ride.
My tiny blog has evolved so much in only one year, and me along with it. This tiny boat has survived some troubled waters to learn some hard lessons. Unfortunately, I think every writer needs these lessons to become the best they can be. (I think I hear the Army calling)
This post was inspired by my friend Victor Diaz, who helms the awesome Infinite Lives and Games podcast (seriously go check it out!). He just celebrated his first year anniversary and I loved listening to him talk about the things he learned over his podcast’s first year. Him allowing his audience a peek behind the curtain inspired me to take an introspective look at what I was doing, faults and all. There were a lot of teachable moments over this time frame. Some of them were easier to process than others, but they all taught me something valuable. A couple bonus life lessons as well.
That “V” word…
My first official review of an AEW product was the May 12th edition of Dynamite. Rereading that review was difficult! Thankfully nobody read what I published because I never marketed it. Nobody but myself and my wife knew about Game Over Gimmicks, which was by design. Those first reviews were horrible. I knew what the three people reading it would say and I wasn’t ready to hear it.
I finally bit the bullet in August and publicly acknowledged what I published. Everyone starts from somewhere, nothing is perfect, and I started embracing that. ‘Good enough’ needs to be said instead of ‘perfect.’ I still miss typos here and there, but mistakes can always be corrected. My ultimate goal is to limit those mistakes as much as possible, but accept when enough is enough.
Vulnerability is a double edged sword. Growth happens when people accept their vulnerabilities and weaknesses, except that’s much easier said than done. It’s not easy to be told you are doing something wrong, in any situation. Especially when it’s something you’re pouring your soul into. I was creating things for inevitable judgment and not ready to hear the verdicts. Silencing that negative internal critic was incredibly difficult.
But once I accepted my vulnerability, I found the key to unlock a vast array of new experiences. Game Over Gimmicks will be going in new, exciting areas I have zero experience with. In the past I would have run from attempting these new and foreign things. Now I’m running towards them! Being okay with failure is an empowering feeling.
Will these new ventures be terrible? Probably! But I guess that’s half of the fun. Getting over that hump taught me one of my most valuable lessons. A lesson that Nike has said for years.
Just do it.
Time is Finite
Who can I talk to about adding an eighth day of the week or 26 hours in a day? That would be greeeaat.
*insert Office Space meme*
When I originally came up with Game Over Gimmicks, not once did I consider the time commitment. I have a full time 40 hour per week job, AEW Dynamite is a weekly two hours, writing said reviews take multiple hours, plus finding time to play and review games on top of that. Not to mention I have a family I cannot abandon. Finding that delicate balance is incredibly hard. In fact, this is a lesson that I haven’t solved at all.
Brain Games
Writing is difficult. Crafting a sentence to portray something was way beyond the difficulty I was ready for. It was a hell of a lot harder than I expected. The blank page is unforgiving and someone with control issues wants things to be perfect. Everyone has their own opinions, but formulating them into cohesive articles is way easier said than done.
Scheduling becomes an important part of the equation. Obviously, Dynamite reviews need to be done as soon as possible, but adding Video Games, family, and a full time job on top of that was a recipe for disaster. My brain could not handle all of that at once. Being perfect with a rigid schedule never worked. A square peg, round hole situation.
I just couldn’t keep up, burnt myself out, and almost had a full mental breakdown. Taking a few weeks long mental reprieve was exactly what I needed, but wouldn’t have happened had I realized I am one person. Time management and balance is one of the most important lessons to learn. Setting boundaries is imperative to my mental health. I learned this the hard way. Getting a few things done routinely at a slow, steady pace is much better than frantically completely five things and destroying my brain so much I need a month off.
Mental health breaks are IMPORTANT.
Distractions Distractions Distractions
This one is more of a continuation of the previous.
Distractions rule our world with an iron fist. There could be fifteen distractions in anyone’s immediate area at any given time. I have destroyed countless hours building routines and schedules, only to watch days evaporate after a couple of distractions lead me like Alice into Wonderland. The desire to stay on task is there, but our lives revolve around things that beckon for our attention.
I am a man coming to grip with the fact his ADHD is strong and rules way too much of his life. This mental break has allowed me to take the pressure off and focus on me. I’m now trying to focus on the roadblocks preventing me from achieving what I want. My mental health was on the backburner for far too long. It’s now one of my main priorities.
One of the first lessons I learned, and continuously struggle with, is to focus on one task at a time. I used to say that I was great at multitasking, but focusing on two tasks at 50% is worse than one task at 100%. Again, slow and steady wins the race.
I have many interests that call my attention daily, and I enjoy all of them, but this is where setting those boundaries returns. If I divide my attention into things outside of the scope of my goals, those goals do not get met. And that is no longer okay. Setting small and large goals is so important and I never did it. Nowadays I try to make daily, weekly, and future goals to create a picture of where I want this to go. I had a small snapshot of Game Over Gimmicks before, but that picture is slowly coming into focus.
What’s on the Horizon?
Writing is one of my newfound loves. Expressing my thoughts excises emotional baggage and centers my thinking. It’s something that I make sure to do every single day. Whether that’s writing a review, trying my hand at fiction, or just simply writing a few pages in my journal. My brain exercises through therapy writing.
And that’s why Game Over Gimmicks will forever stay a written medium. It might evolve into something different in the future, but writing will stay the core.
That being said, I would love to get into streaming! Wrestling watch-a-longs, playing games, and discussing them both sound like a blast. Having positive discussions with a positive community is something I’m striving towards and will have.
But right now I am focusing on improving my writing consistency, proficiency, and improving this website any way I can.
That’s where I’d love some feedback! If you’ve read Game Over Gimmicks at all, let me know what you think! @EikelberryNick
And if you’ve read this blog AT ALL in its first year of existence…I cannot express this enough.
THANK YOU!
[…] which was created two years ago and has become a welcome addition to my life. Last year’s anniversary post celebrated the small things I learned in the first year. The second year afforded a much deeper […]