First Dave Barry.... Now This!

From the OO message boards:

Originally posted by Jeb Tennyson Lund

Realistically speaking, there's almost no chance that I'll ever write three columns per month anymore, let alone once per week. My heart's not in it: not for wrestling, and not for response. I could go into my disaffection with wrestling, at this point, but I won't. Aside from the good people at OO, I get scant replies these days. I blame the paucity of reader mail on my tendency to exhaustively look at something (to the tune of 8 to 11 pages), such that I defensively cover every possible counter-argument when making my point. I've worked so hard to head off the "You forgot to mention THIS!" counter-argument that my columns have swelled to unwieldy and unentertaining proportions, while silencing most dissent. This is not to say that I've gotten too good at what I'm doing; rather, that I've learned to undercut anyone who would knee-jerk say that I've made a mistake.

It’s been fantastic doing this, but I’ve made an agreement with myself that I will no longer, in solitude, think about what I [i]should[/i] be writing about wrestling… no more moments after TV, after the wife’s gone to bed and before I find a book, where I think, “You know, you really should be formulating or crafting or just hacking out [i]something[/i]. You owe it to [i]something.[/i]” If the will comes, it comes. If it doesn’t, I owe it to my own standard of quality to keep mum.

Please, too, keep in mind that this isn’t a total walkoff. I despise the Wrestling Writer (or sports star) declaration of retirement, especially when it results in a “DRAMATIC RETURN TO THE GAME” just months later. If I really want to say something, or feel that I can offer a comment without echoing another (especially myself), I’ll chime in again. No sense in wasting an idea by leaving it unsaid due to an asinine restrictive principle.

More to the point, I long ago promised myself that, if I got within striking distance of 100 columns, I would see this exercise to a nice rounded end, leaving a semi-reasonable block of work. Well, I am within that striking distance, and I think I’ll go for it. I guess this is a long [i]apologia[/i] as well as an explanation that, though it took me around 18 months or so to hit 50 columns, it might take me the next two years to write another 20 or so. I don’t want to become stale, or another exemplar of the Wrestling Writer Repeating Himself to the Satisfaction of Only Himself.

Regardless, I’m mostly done....I’m going soon, but I’m not totally gone.
Thank you.
- Jeb

Wow. I can't say I didn't see it coming at all -- certainly, no one can crank out masterpieces like he has forever. At the same time, I'm more than a little sad to hear this, in a very selfish way.

As I've mentioned to Jeb just now: "Hopefully this will be a true wrestling retirement, where you show up again in six months writing under a mask." Whatever that means....