Current mood:	happy
Current music:	A bad RAW segment

Life, Death, & Everything in Between

To say that it`s been awhile since I have last had contact with the internet world would be more than an understatement. It`s also really funny to me that people have thought that I died, left the wrestling business, became a Mormon (ok, not so much that one) because I haven`t replied to emails (or much less read them) or sent updates to my wonderful webmistress for my website. But all things considered, it`s really great to know I was missed so much. Being in the moment sometimes you don`t realize anyone knows you are alive, you just kind of feel like you are stuck in the loop of the 200+ Glory Girls worldwide. Such isn`t the case, apparently, and thats rad.

So the explanation thing is in order, I suppose, and have promised a couple people here and there I would do that. It`d be rough to recap the past 7 months or so of my life, so a bief overview without making this too much of a ramble-fest in my opinion will be sufficient. If you want more, tough luck. You are probably interested in my life on a creepy level if you aren`t satisfied with this hugely time-consuming update.

So I started the year off with a seperated shoulder. That was good times. It was really hard to work with, hard to train with, hard to brush my hair with, so I let it do what it needed to do the first time I seperated it (about 3 seperations ago) and let it heal up. I understand that any kind of joint injury will never be the same. I don`t expect it to be. I don`t even bench press anymore, I just do dumbells, thats how much I have tore that sucker up. But its all a-ok with me, I learned from experience no matter how hard headed you are about things, sometimes your body just needs to heal, and I was finally nice enough to my body to let it do so.

I went out on a limb and made a career change. I made great money and had alot of fun with the old gig, but things started to change, and I just up and went on to a completely different field, and I must say, it paid off. I really like my new gig, and I got instant respect, admiration, and best of all, promotions, within a matter of months. Things at work have kind of been a whirlwind for me, and have really kept me busy. I`m really the kind of girl who likes to max out every minute of her life with things to do, so of course adding different forms of training to that have really taken up the 16+ hours a day that I`m awake. But I wouldn`t change that for the world =)

Speaking of training, I am doing alot of it. Some of the reason for my absence in wrestling is not only time, but disinterest. I don`t know if that`s really the right word to use, because I haven`t cut back on how much I think about or watch wrestling, but as far as my participation goes, I cut back the amount of bookings I have been doing for sure. Now I definately want to do more, and am pursuiting it, but there was a time that wrestling kind of made me bitter. General wrestling has made me bitter for a while now, but for me there has always been female wrestling, which was really going places in my opinion. The E`s division was the best it had ever been, minus the earlier days for the division when Joshi girls came over and destroyed/got destroyed. And not that every girl signed had the ring capabilities of Dean Malenko, but they did what they could, tried really hard, and got pushed because of it. And then all of the sudden, a gigantic fall off. I know money is tight (and how that happens is beyond me - what are you buying?) but cutting the girls division was *not* the way to go. Its not their fault, they hardly ever get 10 minutes of the show! And I`m sure some juniors can relate with me on the cruiser division, but at least thats going somewhere now. And not that the E is in any way what I base my career off, but to say that doesn`t affect the indies would be a lie. No bookings for the girls up top means less bookings for the girls down here. What really bothered me was the demise of 2 Joshi promotions. I know that they are bankrupt one day and business is booming the next, but Aja not having a home company is just a discrace. Minimal girls promotions in the one country where females are admired for their athletic ability really sucks. So for God`s sake, support women`s wrestling!

With all of that said, I hope its understandable how I lost a little interest in trying to push something that didn`t want to be pushed. It was like beating a dead horse (and I hate to use that analogy because I love horses) everytime we talked about female wrestling in a *wrestling* light. But I understand now how many fans and wrestlers do want this to be more respected and appreciated as a sport, and even though our odds are 1 to 100, we still exist, and as long as there are people out there that want to make this thing happen, I`ll be along for the ride. But by no means was just a lack of interest the entire reason I took a small amount of time off, or time off from the internet. I want to really make it clear that I wasn`t avoiding emails, from promoters or from fans, simply because I didn`t want to answer them - I was legitimately not online for like 6 months. I had to re-activate my hotmail and everything. I seriously had no time to get to the library or internet cafe during their hours of operation because I had things in my real life I had to juggle. But I did just purchase a new laptop and got internet access installed to our new pad, so I can be online at 4 in the morning if thats my only time available.

Back to my original point about training, when I felt girls wrestling was kind of going down, I got more into mixed martial arts and boxing. Things that I had done all of my life, but had to take a back seat to wrestling when I started training. I have really missed competing in real forms of fighting, so to be able to do that again is great. And now that I can actively do both, I`m super happy about that. So all of that little stuff aside, the biggest reason for my time away has been my mom. I don`t really like to talk about personal stuff on here, but I called my mom up one day and she told me she had cancer. It really took the cake on worst phone call I have ever had. My mom has been healthy all of her life. Never sick, never at high risk for anything. I`m an avid supporter of finding a cure for cancer, alot of the reason being that it affects so many women every day. I have made various donations, read tons of books on the disease, really familiarized myself with it - yet it was still shocking to hear someone I know, especially someone I am that close to, had this disease. Things are worlds apart in difference when they happen to someone you know, especially a parent. So not to dwell on the negative, but luckily it was all detected really early and everything was able to be removed. I`m happy to say my mom is probably healthier than she had been before, and has been cancer free for 27 days now =)

I think this pretty much explains my whereabouts lately. As for my interests for the future, I am going to continue training hard, keeping up with shoot fighting and boxing, and hopefully competing with them both soon, and last but not least, wrestling. I have some huge things in the works so as always, stay tuned, and I`ll be sure to keep everyone posted! And last but not least, wrestling and the world lost one of its greats in Shinya Hashimoto. This one really got me. I grew up on New Japan Pro Wrestling, and Hash was a huge staple in that era. I wish that one day I could have seen him wrestle live, but for now, I have hundreds of hours of memories on VHS. RIP Hash.

Love always, Hailey