The End of an Era - OWIE's Demise

It's been awhile since I posted anything in this blog, a regret I hope to change in the days, weeks and months to come. For a long time I've devoted my internet time to working on my website devoted to covering and recording the independent pro wrestling scene on Ontario. What started as a hobby grew into a monster, in the end it was demanding all of my free time to keep up.

Maybe I shouldn't say it demanded anything. It was my own sense of duty that drove me to exhaustion and caused me to neglect other things in my life (this blog among them.) Ultimately I had to make a choice... continue that website or walk away from it completely. Both choices had an upside and both also brought some negatives. After some serious thought I decided to pull the plug on it. The site, "Ontario Wrestling's Indy Elite" no longer exists. "OWIE" is no more.

It caused a bit of a stir in some circles, many people in the local wrestling community took it in stride and wished me well in my future endeavors... Others were quite bitter about it, almost like they felt I didn't have the right to walk away from a "job" that consumed literally hundreds of hours (and hundreds of dollars) every couple of months... a "job" I did for no monetary compensation and often no thank you from those I helped make famous.

Yea, I helped make people famous. OWIE helped put the Ontario indy wrestling scene in front of the whole world. The site was read be people in over 70 countries and in its 6 year existence over 1,000,000 unique viewers stopped to check it out. No other website served the Ontario wrestling scene like OWIE did. I built it and although I had some amazing contributors who submitted content over those 6 years it was me who did the bulk of the work.

I loved doing it but somewhere along the way the fuzz wore off the peach (so to speak) and it became increasingly harder to find the motivation to devote time to the site, especially when most of the feedback I got from those within the wrestling community was either negative or demanding more. The FANS who enjoyed OWIE made it all worthwhile and I still get messages from around the world asking what happened to the site.

I tell them the truth. It's gone and it won't be coming back.

I don't regret a thing.

Life requires balance and OWIE demanded too much time, energy and money. It was time to devote those things to what's really important to my life... my family, my health and my spirituality.

It is my intent to return to this blog to feed my need to write. I'm not sure what I'll write about or how often I'll do it and I don't know if anyone will notice or care that "Dew on the Newts" exists. It doesn't matter if someone comes along for the ride or not because for me, it is enough that I do what I do. If I needed reassurance or a pat on the back for doing something, OWIE never would have made it past its first year.

Balance is key.