Taxicab Confessions, Sans Taxi

I would argue that I've always been one of the most ambitious people in this game. Not just because I've always wanted to get GCW to the point of being universally heralded at the best fed there is (still my primary goal), but I'll readily admit to wanting to retire knowing that I've left a legacy behind.

My retirement is on the horizon. I've got no good read on how fast that horizon is approaching, but there is definitely a correlation between retirement and college graduation. When I first started this game I had a major advantage over the rest of the e-fedding world because not only was I a high school kid with nothing better to do, I never went to school, meaning I had an extra eight hours a day to work on the game.

Consequently, GCW grew really quickly because I was probably the most vigilant fedhead around. Literally from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep I was working on GCW, better than fourteen hours a day. Sad and pathetic, sure, but it certainly accelerated my progress as an e-fedder.

But it did more than just that. It honed my writing skills better than any day in school could have. Though the story obviously goes much deeper, it suffices to say that I learned more about writing from e-wrestling than I ever did from school. Having to set an example for a 30-wrestler roster, competing against the best and my unquestionable drive to be tops at everything I do has certainly contributed to my current academic success. Without modesty I can say that I've received several college papers back exalting my work as the best in the class.

And I owe it all to you people.

My ambition in my early years allowed me to develop into a very good writer, and I suspect you could find many people in this game who would share a similar sentiment. And this is not merely an individual growth, but growth as a group as well. Compared to when GCW first started to rise and I was exposed to the full scope of the game, the overall talent in this game has vastly expanded. There were very good writers back then, too, but the last six or seven years of competition has really expanded the skill set of our community.

My ambition in my later years is now aimed in an entirely different direction. Granted, this blog is and will continue to be directed largely at creating a tighter community among the former PTC feds, but there's a larger purpose in all of this.

As I've had sustained success as an English major at Ohio State, routinely beating the competition in the classroom like I used to do in GTT, I realized just how much of this game translates to the real world. Now, I'm fiercely protective of the barrier between my e-life and my real life. My girlfriend knows nothing of my involvement in this game, and in fact the only friend of mine that does know was once involved in it himself. I'm certainly not taking a dig at anyone that openly brags about the game, just commenting that I choose to keep my participation in e-wrestling a quiet secret.

However, the skills I've picked up along the way, skills obtained from observing and competing against my fellow e-fedders, have absolutely paid dividends in my life. Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't have turned out to be a pretty good writer, because natural talent certainly has something to do with it (stop me if I'm boasting). However, throughout the course of GCW's lifetime I've seen bad writers turn into passable writers (Mike Hardy), average writers turn into good writers (Octavian), and good writers turn into phenomenal writers (Rich Rollins). Competition hones your skills in a way that regular writing simply can't. Writing a short story on your computer and then leaving it is certainly good practice (and is something I do a lot of), but there's no substitute for being thrown into a high-profile match against amazing writers like Jeff, Andy and, to a lesser extent, Ryan and knowing you have to perform in front of a big audience that will all be reading and scrutinizing your work.

And in that way, e-wrestling gives us skills to use later in life. Because now, in the classroom, I'm constantly in competition with my peers for recognition, and I'm able to stand out above the rest because I know how to compete. When I graduate and seek a writing job, I'll know how to zone in and do my best when the pressure is on, because I've already had to meet deadlines, consider my audience, craft cohesive stories and work with others.

So that's my new ambition. I want to help this community continue to grow as writers, just as I hope to continue to grow myself. As long as I'm still in school, still learning, this game will continue to be the greatest resource for learning I have. I can say from experience that our generation is fairly mediocre at writing. I'm in a 500-level (highest for undergrad) course on the Victorian novel, and we had to spend half the day yesterday discussing the basic concepts of how to write a paper. You'd think people would know how to organize their thoughts and create well-crafted text, but they don't. A large portion of them don't even know the full basics of sentence structure and punctuation.

And in this community we can leap above all that. We e-wrestlers have aged and we have real-world considerations, but that makes this game more important, not less. Eventually we'll all outgrow this silliness of pretending to be wrestlers (or, in my case, billionaire megalomaniacs). But when we do, we'll go out into the real world with real skills that our generation desperately lacks.

E-wrestlers are going to take over the world, I tell you. When I run for President in 2028, I'll be calling all of you to fill out my cabinet.