TTFN!

Hello you lovely humans!

As we pass the equinox I feel my energy changing from the excited energy of summer to the deeper richness of winter and I’m feeling discordant.

With this time of year the little movements strike deep and I’ve noticed I’m out of alignment with our little niche.

If I’m going to be very honest with you I’m starting to feel the tug of resentment. Twitter continues to implode and I’ve had an unacceptable number of very last minute cancellations (with no or barely any reimbursement) and I feel like to do this job I’m working against people rather than with them.

It’s not feeling good and if I’ve learned anything from the 14 years I’ve been doing this job is that it’s only fulfilling (for both of us) if I’m on the mats with an open heart.

My longer term opponents will know I pop on and off every few years and I think this is the secret for why I’m one of the ‘old ladies of wrestling’ as Blaze put it earlier this year.

When you work with your body it’s important to keep it fresh and only do it when you feel joy, otherwise you work from your shadow side and I left the office-world precisely because I did not wish to do that.

I’ve been pushing the problem around in my mouth as to why this is, and I think the distillation is that the workers in the sector have matured, but the industry hasn’t.

When I started, social media didn’t exist. The yahoo message boards were considered a bonus, were totally optional and you could have a proper conversation about wrestling. I was in my 20s and I used the extra cash to go to festivals and the ad-hoc nature of it didn’t bother me.

14 years later and I’ve become an expert. I use the money for bigger, more interesting things but that comes with a certain amount of dependency. I need to spend more time keeping myself fit as I age and I take longer to recover from injury. To get any work at all one needs not only to use social media, but to use it regularly and to have a certain amount of expertise on how to use it.

I’ve become a professional and I take great pride in that. However, I’m still being treated like a Saturday morning tennis partner who, if you cancel, will be grateful for the extra few hours in bed to get over the hangover.

There’s also the fee threshold. I can absolutely hike my prices up but honestly, I wouldn’t get any work. I’m actually thrilled there are so many wrestlers - it’s a wonderful activity and an absolute pleasure and we’re friends not competitors because everyone is so different (and so bloody awesome it’s hard not to be friends!). The consequence though is that this is a price sensitive sector - and I want to wrestle with lots of different people not fewer! Dropping my prices to get more bookings doesn’t make my years of expertise feel respected and doesn’t reimburse me adequately for the risk of injury I take or the time I invest in fitness and social media.

So - before y’all get too worried - I’m going to go and hibernate. I’m going to take the winter off and then around Imbolc (February) when the seeds in the ground start to wake up and decide what to do, I’m going to do the same.

I hope that twitter will have settled down and maybe the market will have adjusted by then in some way to accommodate and appreciate those of us who have become veterans. Otherwise I might just leave it to the newer fighters.

Those of you who know me, know I used to work in theatre - and we had the same problem actually - it was a young person’s game because the money and the stability weren’t there to allow people without personal wealth to thrive and the attrition rate was high. The UK wrestling scene was birthed in the early 2000s so this is a new problem for us and we have a choice about whether we wish to grow and mature as the people in it do, or accept that this is a job that one does for a few years and then taps out.

Having seen the latter happen in theatre, I personally think it would be a real shame to lose our talent - and it will be at every level as technology changes, not just us golden oldies. It’s low effort to produce online content these days and online content is scalable, creates a passive income, takes less time, there’s a much lower risk of injury (and of not getting paid) and your market is anyone in the world with an internet connection, not just your local city.

It’s becoming a lot less attractive to do sessions in person so for the time being I will keep my books open for online sessions so if you want to get your fix you can either book a video chat or a roleplay with me, or come visit me on 30th October at the Playfighting Skillz Workshop I’m co-running (and if there’s enough interest will continue to run over the winter) because it’s fresh and fun and I’m finding teaching what I know to the kink scene very rewarding.

I won’t be active on twitter, so if you want to stay updated, you’ll need to be on my mailing list - I might get a craving and open a spot or two over the next month, but these will only be advertised in my newsletter.

If you’ve got this far - thanks for caring about me and for caring about the state of the industry - you’re one of the people who give me hope for change.

This issue is bigger than I am, and as my grandfather used to say - “Let go and let god.”

Maybe I’ll see you next year or maybe I’ll decide to turn hibernation into retirement. We’ll see if anything has changed. Have a marvelous festive season - and of course… if you want to buy me a Christmas present I won’t say no! Hehehehe!

Love you

Tanya

💋💪