ChrisWrestling's blog

I went in to see my optometrist today and as I was waiting to be called back I saw that I had a message on the MF app so I opened it and started to read and then was called back into my appointment.  When I got out I saw that I had a second message from the same person.  The first message was asking if I wanted to roll when he was in town next month and the second message was him berating me for not replying immediately, referencing when we had been chatting while he was still local to Seattle to double down on his opinion of me being a dismissive dick.  So I replied and explained that I was in an appointment and couldn't reply right away, so I checked the dates he was going to be in town and with school they are going to be busy and wouldn't work for me.  I saw he read my replies but didn't reply so I looked back on when we had chatted before and noticed the same overly reactive attitude from 7 years before where I cited health issues getting in the way of us rolling.  I did the math to try to figure out what those health issues may have been (I have had too many), and around that time I was about to leave the gym I was working at in downtown Seattle for one closer to home as my insomnia had gotten so bad I couldn't recognize the faces of my clients if I hadn't been seeing them for more than 2 weeks.  I was in REALLY bad shape then.

So, why blog about this?  Well, first of all, this isn't sniffies, pretty much no one is looking to play right this second.  Secondly, you really don't know what's going on with a person.  Not getting a reply within the hour you see the read report doesn't mean someone is being dismissive or blowing you off, especially if it's 3PM on a Wednesday.  Most people are working at that time so having the expectation that you are going to get an instant reply is completely disconnected from the reality we all live in.  Hell, even if it's a day later that does not mean someone is blowing you off or ignoring you.  Sometimes a message may be read and then something happens, Trump sends the national guard into a person's city, they are in a car crash, a protest increases their commute home by an hour, a family member dies so it is better to give people the benefit of the doubt.  If you don't get a reply, maybe it's better to send a followup message along the lines of, "hey, I reached out yesterday and didn't hear back.  I hope everything is ok on your end.  I would like to emphasize that I am very interested in getting to roll with you, please let me know if you'd like to set something up..." etc.

Now, there are people on here who may either just not be for you, maybe your interests don't match, maybe they are vain and you don't fit into their narrow view of who they may be interested in, maybe they want to roll with someone more their level.  Sometimes it's personal, sometimes it's not but unless someone is attacking you or being rude there is no reason for you to escalate.  Gawd, times are so toxic right now, none of us has the emotional energy to be dealing more negativity from people.  I know I don't and with school, guess what?  I am going to be pretty unavailable most of the time between now and August of 2026.  I have already said no to some people I really REALLY want to roll with.  That's reality, sometimes people just don't have the time or energy to fit wrestling into their lives no matter how important it is to them.

This other example was from wrestlefest last year and when I bring it up, people in NYC generally tell me they are pretty sure exactly who this person is and based on my discussions with others I think at the very least people assume the correct individual.  This was my first wrestlefest and I went there to teach which took up most of my time and energy in NYC. I tried to fit in as many rolls as possible and I think I only missed one or two because they were too close to the end of class and our scheduled time.  Point is, I was booked solid.  After my schedule was pretty much finalized I got a message from someone, I actually had absolutely no interest in but fortunately my schedule was actually full so I didn't even have to lie, I really was booked out.  Despite my trying to be diplomatic and just saying I was booked out he took it VERY personal and got very abusive in his reply to me, filling in the blanks for himself as to why I was rejecting him.  He wasn't actually wrong, he accurately pointed out a lot of the reasons I wasn't even going to put him on the maybe if someone flakes list.  Now, the truth is, I actually do roll with a lot of guys who aren't my type at all.  We're rolling, not screwing.  I've learned over the years that many times, the people we are less excited to meet turn out to be way more fun than we expected and several of those have become repeat matches.  Now, we all have people we are more excited to get to hit the mats with than others but when that guy lashed out at me, it sealed the deal for me, there was no way in hell I was going to give him my time.

So the point of this whole post is this: 1) you don't know what's going on at the other side when you send a message so show some patience, 2) we ALL get rejected, yes even me, 3) follow up with kindness and give the other person the benefit of the doubt if for no other reason than it keeps the door open, 4) while I am not going to name names here you need to understand that this site is set up so that if you're a dick you can end up getting dinged and as mentioned when discussing the WrestleFestNYC incident, people talk and you don't want to set yourself up as the guy everyone hates in your local community.  We are in the age of chatroom and comment section warriors and that toxic behavior becomes a habit that you probably don't want to bring into the more consequential world where you are going to lose matches or get ostracized from the community.  So try not to be that guy.  I'm not saying I'm not a dick, I can be, or judgemental, I'm human, oftentimes I have little capacity to deal with people because I am still an insomniac who has developed workout intolerance which is really really challenging to live with.  People are dealing with shit you cannot see and when they don't reply right away it could just be that they are checking their schedule, they have something going on you don't know about, or maybe they are noodling over whether they are interested enough which is their right to do.  No one is obligated to play with you so don't act like they are.