Wil Wheaton's Blog

I am at my desk, staring at the blinking cursor in my text editor for what feels like an hour. If I were in a movie, the camera would do that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off thing they did with Cameron in the museum, with his eye and the eye in the painting, but with me and the damn cursor.

It just cheerfully sits there, like, “are you doing to do anything? I can blink all day, my dude. I’ll just be sitting here, blinking and waiting. I wait a lot. And I don’t want to make it weird but you’re always staring right at me and not doing anything and it’s kind of creepy. So are you going to actually write anything? Or — oh, hey! Here we go! WHEEE I’m moving to the right an– oh, you stopped. Okay, that’s fine. I’ll just blink while you — WOOOAHHHH now I’m going backward so fast! Oh I think I’m going to be sick!”

After a couple of dry heaves, it continues: “No, no, just more blinking. Okay. Let me catch my breath for a seco- OH GOD WHY DID YOU SELECT ALL OF THAT TEXT I CAN’T EAT ALL OF THAT!

“Gulp, gulp, gulp, burp.” Exhale, gasp. “Oh god that’s a lot. Okay. Okay. You didn’t like those words, I get it. I don’t judge, but if I’m being honest, I didn’t feel them, either. It’s okay, you’re still figuring out these beats. I’m ready when you are. Blink. Blink.

“Oh, you’re getting up and … okay, you’re dusting the bookshelves. Okay, that’s good. You go ahead and I’ll be here when you get back. Just … just blinking. Just blinking because … that’s what I do. I blink and I type things.”

And so it goes, over and over for most of the day. My bookshelves are fucking SPOTLESS.

If we were still doing this with a typewriter, or a yellow pad, my room would be a paper ball pit. Which actually sounds kind of fun, if I’m being totally honest.

Anyway, this is a long way to go so I have something to post today, and it’s a long way to go to say “I eventually got about 190 words that I may even keep, and that’s good enough for me.”

As my dear friend Will says, Onward!

It’s been one of those days when I do an incredible amount of creative work, but it looked like I spent the whole day just cleaning and unfucking my office while I watched and listened to the latest episode of The Record Junkies, followed immediately by the entire Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

Yes, to the untrained eye, it would appear that I didn’t do any writing work today. But! The creatives among us already know what I’m going to say next: the entire time, I was creating space for the writer’s assistant who lives in my brain (Damon Knight calls his “Fred”, mine is currently unnamed) to help me figure out how to get through this block that’s vexing me. He did a ton of work, pitched a lot of ideas (some of them were even kinda good), and threw away a lot of stuff that’s been cluttering up the space between my idea and a draft I don’t hate. We got a lot accomplished. Maybe tomorrow we’ll actually make words happen.

Then, at the end of the day, I went to the pharmacy and got my flu shot.

Thank you, science!

I’ve been getting the flu shot every year for as long as I can remember, and I can’t remember the last time I had the flu. I feel like these two things may be related. I have a lot of travel scheduled during cold and flu season, and I’d like to keep my streak alive.

Here’s a thought, that came up while I was getting ready to hit publish:

I haven’t written a blog post like this in years. Somewhere along the way, I decided that everything had to be just so, you know? I really got in my own head and in my own way. It doesn’t have to be huge essays or perfect, or some minimum length. It can just be my blog.

Writer’s Block and Creative Paralysis Hate This One Weird Trick!

I’m gonna try to remember that one way to just post more stuff in my blog (because it makes me happy to do that) is to just post more stuff in my blog (because it makes me happy to do that).

Next year, Stand By Me will turn 40.

I know. Take all the time you need to absorb and deal with that. It kinda snuck up on me, too.

We filmed Stand By Me in the summer of 1985, mostly in and around Brownsville, Oregon. At the end of production, we moved down to Burney, California, where we filmed the train trestle sequence. Then we wrapped, we all went home, and waited a year for the movie to be released. During that year, they changed the name from The Body to Stand By Me, and recast Richard Dreyfuss as the narrator.

During that year, I just waited. It never occurred to me to consider that it wouldn’t be released, though that was a very real possibility. In fact, when Stand By Me turned 25, Jerry, Corey, and I sat down with Rob Reiner and Richard Dreyfuss to revist production, Jerry told us that he didn’t think it would ever come out, because his dad had told him that most movies that are filmed don’t actually get released. I can’t imagine that year for him, feeling like all the work was going to go into a warehouse to be overseen by top men. I can’t imagine what all of our lives would we like if it had.

I’ve been thinking about production a lot this summer, because it’s wild to me that I know pretty much exactly where I was and what I was doing 40 years ago to the day, when I had no idea that … everything that happened would happen. It’s wild to me that I turned 13 FORTY years ago. It just doesn’t feel that far away.

ANYWAY. This is happening:

STAND BY ME: The Film and Its Stars 40 Years Later‍
‍A Night of Reflection, Connection, and the Friendships That Shape Us
with Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell, and Wil Wheaton
‍
‍Some stories don’t fade with time—they grow deeper. For 40 years, Stand By Me has spoken to something timeless in all of us: the wonder and heartbreak of growing up, the bonds we form in childhood, and the way those moments stay with us long after the journey ends.
Join us for a deeply special evening honoring one of the most beloved films of a generation. Experience Stand By Me on the big screen once more, followed by an intimate, long-awaited reunion and live, in-person conversation with the stars who lived it—Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell, and Wil Wheaton.
Together, they’ll revisit the summer that changed everything—on set and on screen—sharing memories, laughter, and secrets behind a film that still brings people together after all these years. The evening will also include heartfelt reflections on working with their friend and co-star, the late River Phoenix, whose iconic performance continues to resonate with audiences around the world.
‍“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve.”

‍This night is for anyone who knows exactly what that means.

Tickets are available for two screenings:

December 4 at Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New HampshireDecember 5 at Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, New Jersey

These two events will obviously be extremely special to me (I don’t want to speak for the other guys, but I strongly suspect they would say the same thing), and we are doing them with an eye toward doing screenings in a few different cities next year. These screenings will tell us what we need to know, so we can plan accordingly. I have SO MANY ideas to do some genuinely special things, so cross all your fingers.

August 23 is WWdN’s official birthday. It was 24 years ago last week that I finished building a website from scratch (in notepad, using raw html), after about 6 weeks of intensive study, and many late nights of trial and several errors, and turned the lights on here, for the first time. Sadly, the earliest capture I can find at the Internet Archive is from 2002, but this is pretty much what it looked like for most of its first decade:

You’ve come a long way, baby.

Almost a quarter of a century, man. Twenty-four years. And to think that it had only been a few weeks earlier that I used Geocities to make my first website that I called Where’s My Burrito? I started my blog with this:

So the votes are officially in.
Out of the total of 4 votes I got, all of them said it would be cool to have an online journal, so here it is.

Extra special thanks go to loren who directed me to blogger, a website that will hopefully make this whole weblog (the cool kids call it a “blog”) easy and painless.

I’m off now to make dinner for the family. You know what we’re having tonight?

Burritos. No shit.

I could have sworn I made my first posts in 2000, but it wasn’t until 2001, a few days before my birthday.

“The cool kids call it a blog.” Heh.

What a journey, huh? From there to here, in so many ways, even if I did have total access to the part of me that puts words together, I don’t know that I could fully communicate what it has all meant. I guess it’s a quarter century of growing up, becoming who I always wanted to be, and all the joys and sorrows along the way. I mean, I don’t have to tell you; a lot of you reading this today were also reading that, all those years ago.

I’m going to pause a moment to clearly and loudly say thank you to everyone who supported and encouraged me, then and now and in between. It’s been about 8300 days since I cut the ribbon here, and looking through my archives, I saw that I wrote this in on my blog’s birthday in 2019, after about 6500 days:

28 year-old me was struggling so much, in those days. He was trying so hard to be a good husband and stepfather with pretty much no support from his narcissist parents who weren’t thrilled about him marrying a woman with children. He struggled with undiagnosed depression, Anne’s vindictive and destructive ex-husband, and not meeting the extremely high expectations he had for himself. He has some real painful days ahead, but he gets through them with the love and support of his phenomenal wife, who he still can’t believe picked him, out of all the humans on the planet. He doesn’t know it, yet, but writing this blog is going to change his life, save his life, and make it possible for him to find his own dream, instead of trying (and failing) to live someone else’s.

I have grown and healed so much since 2019, in spite of the chaos, trauma, and cruelty we have all been subjected to since 2016, and I’m almost as proud as I am grateful.

I wanted to write something last week to mark this moment, but just couldn’t find the words, so I celebrated the moment quietly, which is how I’ve been doing basically everything for the last couple of years, while I am intensely focused on my own recovery. I don’t think I even mentioned to Anne that the date had passed.

That’s kind of where I’ve been, creatively and energetically, for this entire year. I mentioned in an Instagram reel that I haven’t had access to my creative self all year, I think largely because of the shock and trauma of America’s dumbfucks voting to put a fascist tyrant and his administration of incompetent criminals back into power, after we all saw how incompetent, evil, cruel, destructive, and violent they are.

Really great work, everyone. Especially everyone who was really worried about the cost of living, you know, the milk and eggs crowd? How’s that working out for you? And all the Walk Away people must be sleeping so well these days. Just fantastic fucking work all over the place, you fucking chuds. They are planning to ban the Covid vaccine, so those of us who want to protect ourselves from all the stupid conspiracy theorist dipshits who think bullshit and science are just “opinions” are just fucked, now. You’ve doomed us all to the world you alone deserve. I, for one, will never forget what you did to us, and I will never forgive you. I hope you spend the rest of your miserable lives ostracized, alone, and afraid. May you never know a moment of peace. May you wear your support for this petty little tyrant like a scarlet letter, so everyone knows who you are and what you did.

Anyway, as you can see, I’ve been distracted and preoccupied with all of this endless horror. I’m just exhausted by ten in the morning every day, and try as I might to find other things for my attention and time, I keep getting drawn back to the news, hoping I’ll see The Headline, or some indication that the entire Republican party, its punditry, and its media echo chamber have finally stopped being singularly focused on protecting and covering up for a pedophile rapist and his child sex trafficking pals. And I haven’t even touched on the endless attacks on innocent people who have been declared Enemies of the State because of who they love or the color of their skin. It’s fucking disgusting, deplorable, infuriating, and has ripped the mask off of much of America. It’s been really hard for a lot of us who grew up reciting and believing “liberty and justice for all”.

That’s my head, every day. I’m worried for the people I love, I’m sick to my stomach as I watch six unelected, transparently corrupt, Christian Nationalists issue unsigned decrees that overturn the will of the voters as they hand more and more unchecked power to a criminal and his criminal organization.

It is so hard to tell stories, to find the joy and release in creative writing, when I feel like the world outside my window is on fire. Sure, my privilege currently protects me, but Timothy Snyder pointed out that if we have to remind ourselves of all the ways we are currently safe from political lawlessness, we are already living in an autocracy. That’s scary as fuck to me.

For a lot of us who are survivors of abuse, every day with this motherfucker making everything about him and his fragile little ego is jabbing a finger into a deep bruise that can’t ever fully heal. For a lot of us who have worked so hard to leave and overcome our abusers, to live our lives as fully as possible in spite of our experiences, it is an endless struggle of flashbacks and nervous system dysregulation, while we remind our bodies that we aren’t trapped with our abuser anymore. Thank god for EMDR. Thank god I can afford regular mental health care. Thank god he’s going to die and hopefully soon.

I haven’t wanted to write anything in my blog because what I just wrote is all I have been able to write. When I want to tell a fun story about playing Mysterium with my family, taking my son axe throwing for his birthday, celebrating my son earning his Master’s Degree and starting his PhD, or any of the things I couldn’t wait to write Before All This, I stare at an empty document while I write and erase ten words over and over again, hoping these will be the ones that grant me access to my Creative Self. And the harder I try to find them, the more effectively they hide from me.

I have also felt like I shouldn’t write in my blog, while I have been struggling to write and turn in two pieces that I agreed to write last year. One is an introduction to a book, and the other is a short piece of fiction. Last week, I finally broke through on the introduction. After almost a full year of struggling and failing, I found it. It was so much fun to work on, so deeply satisfying to finish, and such a relief to turn in. I have never been this late on anything. I hope I’ll never be this late on anything again. I hope nobody notices that I’m writing in my blog when I haven’t finished the other thing, which I have started and abandoned too many times to count. I have probably written ten thousand words or so, trying to find the approximately 700 or so I committed to assembling into a story. I’ve tried to come at it so many different ways, from big ideas to small ideas, from limited points of view to omniscient points of view, and nothing is sticking. It just feels like I’m writing with someone else’s hands that don’t fit quite right. Maybe writing here today will help me find my own fingers again.

Maybe I needed time away, and that’s why I didn’t write anything in my blog for over a month, not even on the day that was a cause for celebration, the anniversary of the moment I took my first big step into the world that had always been hidden from me, or made inaccessible, by my dysfunctional family and abusive parents.

And I know that it is weird to hear a 53 year-old man talk about his parents and his childhood so much. I see pretty cruel commentary about that online, and while I don’t take it personally, I do compassionately hope that the kids who are saying it only do so because they haven’t experienced what I have, so they can’t understand. I get it; in a lot of ways, I feel like I’ve only been living my own life since I quit drinking in 2016 (hell of a year to start rawdogging reality, wil), and I’ve only been doing the work to recover from and manage CPTSD for a couple of years.

I don’t know how to do any of this, but I’m trying to figure it out. I know that writers get stuck and find their way out of it, and I’ve been doing my best to give myself patience and grace and space to figure it all out … I’m just growing impatient, is the thing.

I have a great story just sitting here, inches away from my fingertips, and I can’t figure out how to grasp it.

So I guess I’ll remind myself that I’ve been putting words together in public for about 8500 days, I’ve written a bunch of books — including a New York Times bestseller! — and that whatever it takes to do it is in me. It’s just doing a very good job of Not Being Seen.

But this feels like something of a start, anyway. I forget that it’s okay to make short, silly, 50 word posts here. I forget that I don’t have to follow up every long absence with something profound and carefully edited.

I’ve been doing this for almost 25 years, and I still forget. But today, I remembered.

Thanks for listening to me.

I had such a good time with my garden last season. It was the first time I had ever capital-t Tended a garden in my life, and it was a deeply meaningful experience for me. I learned a lot about myself in the process, because I kept allowing my garden to be a metaphor. Also, I had more tomatoes than I could give away, the biggest pumpkin I have ever seen, peppers forever, and sunflowers that went up to here.

I have been intensely focused on CPTSD recovery from child abuse for a couple of years. I work on it in therapy every week, and I work on it in between sessions, when I’m able. Walking my garden twice a day gave me lots of opportunities to reflect on The Work that I was doing, and I’m pretty sure it gave me an extra d4+1 on all my saves.

I live in zone 10B, and we can grow just about anything here, all year long, if we’re willing to do some extra work during the frigid 40 degree nights we endure for up to a whole week every January. I’ve never done that before, because I’ve never felt connected enough to my garden to get the winter survival gear out of the trunk.

But this past winter, I thought I’d give it a go. I looked into it, and saw that most of the winter stuff available to me didn’t interest me enough to plant and Tend it. But I read about planting a cover crop, and that sounded pretty cool. I liked the idea of putting a ton of seeds down and staying out of their way while they did their thing for a couple of months.

I ended up choosing a mixture of oats, peas, and radishes. I cut everything down to a nub, to let the roots die off and nourish the soil, and tossed the seeds all over the place.

Over the winter, they sprouted and grew into one hell of a cover crop. The peas produced beautiful, delicate, purple and white flowers. The oats got so tall, and surprisingly smelled kind of sweet, too. Marlowe loved eating big blades of grass every day. I noticed that they sort of whistled or hummed softly when the breeze was just right. Depending on the sunlight, they looked green or blue.

About a month ago, they started to dry up. Marlowe lost interest in the grass, which I presume wasn’t as sweet as it was when it was still cold at night. Anne and I planned this season’s garden, with fewer tomatoes, and I began to prepare the planting beds.

I started clearing the cover crop out, one section at a time. The peas were all dead and crumbled in my hands. I turned them into the soil. There was one radish, a big daikon-looking thing that filled the air with a spicy blast when I yanked it up. Then there were the oats, three and four feet tall, growing in thick clumps that formed a tiny forest for ants. I pulled them out, one at a time, shaking all the soil off the roots. Dust clung to my hands and forearms.

I started on one side, and worked my way down and around, one clump at a time. The soil came up and fell off the roots easily. It fell back into fluffy mounds that I swept into the holes left behind. I wiped the sweat off my brow with the back of my right hand, then wiped the mud I’d left behind with my left hand. I tried both forearms before I started laughing and accepted my muddy forehead.

I kept working, silently thanking the oats for doing exactly what they were asked to do as I cleared one and then the next and the next.

I blinked sweat out of my eyes, shook some mud off my head, and looked at the newly-cleared garden. The soil was fluffy and rich. Loamy, I think they call it. It was ready for the growing season, and I was ready to plant it.

But first, in the final corner, there were a couple clumps of very tall, very thick, oats to pull out. I considered leaving them, so Marlowe could continue to have her grass snacks, but she hasn’t been that interested for about two weeks, at least.

“You have done all that was asked of you,” I said, “you can rest, now.” I wrapped my hand about the base of the clump nearest to me and gently pulled it up. I shook the soil out of its roots, put it to the side, and moved on to the next one. I stopped suddenly and stared through the little forest.

There was a deep green … something … against the wooden edge of the planter. Some kind of hornworm, maybe? A beetle I’ve never seen before? What the hell is that?

I parted the stalks and saw a single jalapeño hanging from the top of a single stalk. The nub I cut back at the end of last year, safely hidden by the cover crop, grew back at some point, flowered, and produced a single, perfect, beautiful fruit while nobody was looking, or expecting anything from it. I looked closer and two additional flowers revealed themselves.

I cleared the remaining oats, careful to not disturb my unexpected jalapeño. It’s obviously thriving, but the flowers are so delicate before they begin to bear fruit; they must be treated with care, even if that just means being careful around them. It’s good to do that, from time to time, I think: remember to take care. We can easily damage something we aren’t even thinking about, when we are careless.

I didn’t expect anything from the cover crop. I just put it down and hoped the seeds would grow. I didn’t expect anything from this jalapeño. In fact, Mr. Bond, I expected it to die.

It’s amazing what happens when we plant seeds, and tend to our gardens, without any expectations, isn’t it?

Back in the old days, the good old days, when it was generally accepted that Fascism and Nazis were bad, bloggers would write these posts that were sort of recaps of what we were doing, what we’d been doing, with some links to stuff we liked. This is one of those posts.

Good morning. I’m in Jackson, Mississippi, for the Mississippi Comi Con. Come see me if you’re local! I’m here all day today and tomorrow.

My travel yesterday was basically uneventful, once I was actually on a plane and in the sky. My connection in Dallas was delayed three different times, and each time the airline told me that my gate had been changed from where I was, to the gate that was farthest away in the terminal. So I spent a couple hours walking back and forth, which honestly wasn’t bad at all. I probably got in more steps walking in that terminal than I get on a typical Thursday.

The invention of noise canceling earbuds has made all the difference for me, with travel. I can wrap myself in a bit of a cocoon, and just get where I am going without a lot of sensory overload and overwhelm. Usually, I just listen to one of my playlists, but I have a mountain of Audible credits that I’ve been turning into books. For the last week or so, I’ve been going back and forth between Rip It Up And Start Again, by Simon Reynolds, and Peter Hook’s book about Joy Division1. They are both oral histories of the post-punk movement from around 1976 to 1990, from different points of view. The parts where they overlap are just fascinating. Hookie has his memories of specific events, and Reynolds collects memories from other people who were at the same event. I’m sure there are other books, from other members of other bands, that would fill in even more details. This is one of the reasons I just love history so much, and why it’s so satisfying to track down primary sources.

When I wasn’t listening to those books, I read a short story that’s one of the Hugo finalists2, Marginalia, by Mary Robinette Kowal. It’s featured in Uncanny Magazine, which is where a TON of finalists were published this year.3

I usually arrive hungry (thanks, Anthony Bourdain4) but I did some math in Dallas and realized I wouldn’t be landing until almost 11, and I didn’t want to eat at midnight, even if my body insisted it was only 9pm. So I looked around the terminal and my choices were Starbucks and Whataburger, or some combination of granola bars, a dodgy-looking apple, and a sad Wil. So I chose Whataburger and OMG it was perfect. I don’t usually eat stuff like that, and it was like BOOM COMFORT FOOD from the first bite. It reminded me of the little burger shacks that were in parking lots in the Valley when I was a kid, with those perfect drive-thru fries that you’d eat half of before you got home. My body wasn’t thrilled that I put a burger and fries into it so late in my day, but my body’s been kind of a dick lately, so it can just deal with it.

ANYWAY. I finally got to my hotel. Finally got checked in. Got to my room just around 1130pm, not hungry, but wide awake. Neat.

I watched some YouTube, read some blogs, and finally fell asleep around 1am local time. I slept shockingly well, woke up feeling fully rested, and now I’m trying to find things to do until it’s time to go to work. I’ve actually run out of brain cycles for reading, or even listening to someone else read — does that happen to other people? You really want to keep going because you’re so interested or enthralled or whatever, but your brain is just like, “dude I can’t. I’ve run out of focus and I don’t know what to tell you.” It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me.

While I was trying to wind my brain down, I watched this video about merch5, and now I want to record myself narrating a very short …. something … that’s up to about 5 minutes, and release it on extremely indie, extremely DIY, cassettes and vinyl. When Sean Bonner and I did Saturday Night Massacre back in 20176, as part of the Kickstarter one week project thingy, we wanted to do something like this, and I can’t remember if we actually made physical media or not. I don’t think we did, but just because we ran out of time. It looks like it isn’t too difficult to get the things made, though. It’s just the fulfillment that would take some meaningful time.

If I created some bespoke physical media that cost around $30 all-in after shipping, would you be into that? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll prioritize accordingly.

Oh! Speaking of physical things … we have a new enamel Good Morning Nerds pin for you at Stands! Check it out!

I love the image of my bookcase they put on the card, my glasses, and the spout of hair that always explodes off the side of my head. It’s the little details, y’all..

And I brought Trek Side of the Moon back at Cottonbureau.

This con marks the official beginning of my 2025 Summer Convention Season. Over the next month or so, here’s where I’m scheduled:

July 4-5 I will be in Montreal for Montreal Comic ConJuly 11-13 I will be in Knoxville for Fanboy ExpoJuly 20-22 I will be in Atlanta for ATL Comic Convention

I think there are one or two others that I’m not remembering, but that’s July. I really should have a page with this information that I can link to, rather than relying on my memory, but I’ve never done more than five shows in a calendar year before now, and my memory has been more than enough to keep them all straight. This year, I’m doing more than I have in a long time because I feel like we need to get out and do the fun things, get together with our fellow nerds in a safe place to express ourselves and see each other, now more than ever. Everything is terrible, but at least we can have a few hours, a couple days, of peace and respite, surrounded by people who love the things we love, the same way we love them.

Community is important in the best of times. It’s VITAL when we have thugs brutalizing, terrorizing, and kidnapping our friends and neighbors, under orders from a wannabe despot who seeks to use the power of the State — power that belongs to the people — to wage war against citizens who won’t accept him as our king. Going to conventions, game days at your local game shop, Neighborhood Nights Out in your community, and gently interacting with other people is a massive bulwark against tyranny7, according to professor Timothy Snyder, one of the leading experts in the world on the subject.

So do your patriotic duty and go to a convention this summer! It’ll be fun! Joy is resistance!

I’m so blessed and so grateful that I attract kind, creative, enthusiastic people when I am at a show. I always get the most surprising and beautiful things, and I love to share them. As always, I’ll be posting to my Instagram stories from the con. Clever is my Kryptonite, and there are always clever people at these things.

Okay, that’s all for today. I hope everyone has the most wonderful weekend possible. Take care of yourselves, and take care of each other.

He has the most soothing voice, ever. I feel like I’m sitting in a cafe with him while he tells me all about this time in his life. The way he makes me feel as I’m listening to him is what I hoped to give to people who listen to Still Just A Geek. ︎I have this idea to narrate all the finalists in the short story category for my podcast. I don’t think we’ll be back in production in time to do this before the awards are handed out, but it’s something I’d love to do next year, and every year after that, if they’ll let me. ︎Have I mentioned that Lynne and Michael Thomas, who edit Uncanny, found all the stories I read in the first season of It’s Storytime? If I can afford it, I’m hoping to work with them again. They are amazing. ︎May his memory be a blessing. ︎As it relates to DIY and indie creators. This guy is as enthusiastic about this kind of thing as I am, and loves to make fun stuff just because it’s fun to make. There are a lot of ancillary benefits, as he observes, but even if you’re not someone who would enjoy (or is looking for) those particular benefits, his excitement, enthusiasm, and creativity shine though. I can see how just making this thing he thought was silly and fun affected not only his creativity, but the whole band’s creativity. ︎GodDAMN was this project fun. The history, the Kickstarter, all of it. It’s one of those things we did because we wanted it to exist, and we didn’t care if a hundred people or zero people liked it. As it turned out, 138 people liked it. That’s a nice, even, 140 when you count both of us. ︎12. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life. ︎

Lift every voice and sing,
‘Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ’til victory is won.

I did not know about Juneteenth until I was in my 40s. I recall how embarrassed and ashamed I felt, but it just wasn’t taught to me in school, and America doesn’t exactly go out of her way to teach privileged white kids like me about the horrors our ancestors inflicted on generations of human beings. Hopefully, that has changed.

In the extremely unlikely event you are hearing about this for the first time: “Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. The holiday’s name, first used in the 1890s, is a portmanteau of the words June and nineteenth, referring to June 19, 1865, the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War.”

As the institutions and corporations that influence so much of American culture draw shamefully away from celebrating and honoring marginalized communities, including communities of color, it falls (as it always does) to us, the people, to step up and use our collective voice to speak out so our friends, neighbors, and fellow humans who do not have the same privilege that so many of us have are seen and heard.

Here’s LeVar Burton reading the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Google put this on their doodle a few years ago. Today, there is nothing. Shameful. My bad. My VPN autoconnected to the UK, and when I reset it to the US, I see that Google is honoring Juneteenth. I regret the error.

I’ve been open and unashamed about my mental health struggles and triumphs, always willing to talk about my CPTSD, always willing to supportively listen when someone chooses to share their experience with me.

I make this choice every day, because I am doing my best to be the person I need in the world. I need people who are kind and compassionate, who are willing to share their struggles and victories in a way that validates my own experiences. I make this choice so that maybe I can be the person I need, for someone I will never meet, the way people like Jenny Lawson, or Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade were for me, when I was beginning my healing journey.

It’s in that spirit that I’m writing today. This is sort of a general update on how that journey is going, and a look at where I am, with some thoughts on how I got here.

So, broadly and generally speaking, I’m doing great! I mean, everything in the whole world is terrible, but the little bit of reality that’s being rendered around me at any given moment is pretty great. I’m healthy and safe, my family is healthy and safe, I have all the work I need, I have time and space for activities.

But … the chaos, cruelty, rage, and unpredictability coming out of the White House is identical to what I experienced growing up1 and holy shit has that activated a lot of stuff for my body to remember.

For the two weeks or so that preceded Sunday, I woke up to intense anxiety every morning, before I was even fully awake and aware of anything. It was really unpleasant, but at least I knew that it was nervous system dysregulation2, and I have a lot of skills I can use to help my nervous system get back into a parasympathetic, resting, state. I’m grateful that I know what to do, but my god did I wish I didn’t have to do it every morning at the start of my day.3

Then, Sunday, I woke up like Frodo in Rivendell, and I have, every morning since. I don’t feel tight and clenched in my chest. I haven’t sweat through my pajamas and woken up shivering. I have had peace and warmth and gentle calm.

And the thing is, I didn’t know when this would happen, but I knew that it would. This sort of nervous system freakout thing tends to happen when I’ve been working hard to reprocess one or more specific traumas, and I’m really close to closing a circle on my imaginary trauma healing watch. It’s like my body doesn’t realize, yet, that I’m safe and I’m now, and it needs to be gently coaxed out of dysregulation.

I’ve closed a few metaphorical circles over the years since I started EMDR and IFS therapy, and I have had some version of this experience each time. When it does, I imagine a drawing of my body, like from one of those old Disney SCIENCE IS FUN cartoons. In some places, there is fear and anxiety.4 In others, confusion5. Depending on how old I am in the drawing, there’s anger and resentment6. And all around these memories, connected to each of them, is sadness and loss. Over time, as I’ve worked so hard to heal from the abuse of my emotionally immature, toxic parents, those pieces I see in the drawing have faded away, eventually joining together in lingering loss and sadness.

And honestly, I’m okay with that. It’s okay to feel sad. It’s okay to acknowledge the loss. I hasten to clarify that this took literal years of work. When I first began to see all the sadness, it was like looking into infinity. When I first felt the enormity and profundity of the loss, it was free falling into an abyss. There were a lot of stops and starts as I learned how to regulate it, how to reprocess it in a way that wasn’t overwhelming.

Again, not easy. Again, years. Again, worth it.

Now, listen, I am not a doctor and I have no professional experience or education. I’m just sharing my experience. But if you see something familiar, I encourage you to look into what nervous system dysregulation is, and learn some of the techniques we use to calm our bodies down when they aren’t on the same page as our mind, our soul, our Self.

A few resources I value include

Dr. Nicole LePera, the Holistic PsychologistThe book The Body Keeps The ScoreThe book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature ParentsThe YouTube channel Therapy in a NutshellEFT Tapping. This is the weirdest thing ever. When I first heard about it, I thought it was bullshit. I don’t know why or how it works, but it’s been PROFOUND for me in many cases. YouTube has some good follow-along guides, but a fuckton of grifter wellness woo woo bullshit. Just use good judgment and common sense. Like, you aren’t tapping your way to riches, guys.

There’s a somatic component to emotional healing and trauma recovery that I didn’t expect. It’s only recently that my emotional self and my physical self have started to work in harmony, and that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t know that the somatic part existed. It’s taken such a long time, and though the work is ongoing, I hope that someone who needs to know that they aren’t alone sees this. I hope this helps on your own healing journey.

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Take care of yourselves, friends, and take care of each other.

My father’s rage, my mother’s fear, and the tension between them was so thick in the air, it was suffocating. I never knew what was coming down the hallway, or through the front door. Would dad be mean to me, or would he just ignore me? Would mom and dad fight so ferociously that it ends with my mom kicking another hole in another cabinet? We’re running out of towels to hang over the ones that are already there. I’m going to put headphones on and turn them up as loud as they can go because that’s the only way to escape the yelling and arguing that vibrates through the walls into my bedroom. ︎For decades, I had panic attacks every night when I was falling asleep. More often than not, I had night terrors, these vaguely remembered nightmares that had no images or other senses associated with them, just pure terror. When it was really bad, they happened more than once a night and the only reason I stayed asleep was after I’d cried myself to sleep in exhaustion. Trying to escape them was a big part of my alcohol abuse. I’m so grateful that doesn’t happen anymore. ︎And it still kind of lingered with me throughout the day, you know? It was a lot. ︎Oh, imagine that Professor Duck guy, giving a lecture at a chalkboard. ︎Why is he so mean to me? Why won’t she just let me be a kid? Why won’t they love me like they love my brother and sister? ︎Or, there was. The healing ring I am most proud of closing, the one that was the key to closing so many others, was this one. When I realized that my anger was no longer a shield that protected me, but something else entirely that only caused me pain, it was astonishingly easy to find it, coax it out, validate it, and send it on its way. There isn’t any anger in my drawing now. Where it used to be is something that is almost indifference. ︎

This thing has been happening to me since I built my first blog about 25 years ago, and you’d think that by now it would have stopped, but here we are.

The longer I go between posts, the more SUPER IMPORTANT the next post becomes. This is especially gross after I’ve been promoting something. I feel like I’ve bombarded the world with my promotional stuff, so I ought to give the world something to offset that.

…only when I sit down to do that, the part of me that creates those things is like, “Oh hell no. I’m on vacation.”

So I come in here, day after day, get to about this point in a post just like this one, and then I get frustrated, delete it, and go play video games.

I have to break that cycle, so here’s a little bit of a roundup to put something new here.

Yesterday, I finished building the LEGO Batmobile, which I started months ago. It has some adorable little details that were a lot of fun to discover, but holy shit was it tedious most of the time. It turns out that building vehicles, even one that I have been obsessed with since I was a little kid, is not something I enjoy.

I think I’m doing the Haunted House next.

If you’d told me a year ago that the Stanley Cup final in 2025 would be the same teams from 2024, I never would have believed you, and once again I am cheering for Florida because Edmonton is literally the only Canadian team I just can’t abide. Sorry, Oilers Nation, but fuck Corey Perry.1

Remember Trek Side of the Moon? It’s back, in T-shirt form.

I loved the movie, but am very late to the What We Do In The Shadows series party, so I’m only now getting into its third season. A couple nights ago, I watched an episode that takes them to Atlantic City. Nandor gets completely hooked on a Big Bang Theory slot machine, and is delighted to discover that there is a television series that is “faithful to the slot machine.”2

The thing is … because The Big Bang Theory canonically exists inside the What We Do In The Shadowsverse, that means I exist inside that universe. This feels like an achievement that should come with a badge, and it makes me stupidly happy.3

Late last week,I saw that Loretta Swit passed away. We worked together when I was a kid, and I remembered some things about her.

A friend of mine observed that we are slowly becoming the Elders, and that’s just really weird. I have been thinking about that, and it turns out there is a lot about that I’m not really ready to embrace, like accepting that people I love, who mean so much to me, are getting older (and elderly) with all that implies. It’s just … it’s really weird. At the same time, it feels really good and … gentle? … to embrace a position in life that allows me to be a kind, patient, supportive, and encouraging person in the world for anyone who needs it.

I’m thinking a lot about how I can talk about things from a place of experience, in a way that younger me would have been able to hear and internalize. I want to be a Helper so much, y’all.

I had a meeting with my team to discuss next steps on It’s Storytime. The audience is small but passionate, and growing steadily. I think we’ve found a way to make it break even, or slightly better, while the audience continues to grow. Thank you to everyone who is supporting the show on Patreon, to everyone who has liked and subscribed and whatnot. It looks like the audience is right around 20,000 listeners which seems like a lot to me, and something I feel really good about! But you know what’s crazy? In the podcast world, it’s tiny. Isn’t that nuts?

When I was walking Marlowe, I came across this weirdly bent spoon in the street, so I posted it in my Instagram stories with the caption “If anyone sees Yuri Gellar, tell him I found his spoon.”4

I think this is a pretty good joke.

I watched a fantastic film a couple nights ago, about the post-punk scene in West Berlin from 1979-1989, called B-Movie: Lust & Sound. It’s streaming all over the place, and if you like the same kind of music and aesthetics that I do, it’s probably worth your time.

I think that’s all for now. Have a good day, friends.

Also, Florida sent 9 players to Four Nations, and Four Nations was the most exciting and satisfying hockey tournament I have ever seen. So there’s that. ︎I love how this show keeps surprising me like this. The first time, it was throwing the bone off the roof in the werewolf fight. I never saw it coming, and it just killed me. ︎I also exist inside Tommy Westphal’s snow globe, but that doesn’t feel as exclusive. They’ll let anybody into that thing. They let me in there! ︎If you get this reference, that means it’s time to schedule a colonoscopy, if you haven’t already. And make sure you’re getting enough vitamin D, because our aging bodies need it. ︎

I recorded this episode of the Katee Sackhoff Podcast a couple of weeks ago. It’s when I realized I needed to spend some money on a camera and some lights, so I could present myself in my — literal — best light.

I mean… look at the difference between us:

Left: Katee Sackhoff is properly framed and lit. On the right: Wil Wheaton is blown out, pixelated, and coming to you from a nightmare.

Okay! Lesson learned! All future on-camera podcast appearances will look a little less … uh … 320×260.

I had such a wonderful time talking with Katee, this could easily have gone on another hour. It was such a privilege to spend this time with her. Here’s an embed from YouTube:

Very much looking forward to having breakfast with Katee. Seth McFarlane is not invited, but will be honored while we wait for our food1.

Podcast news!

Feedback, reviews, comments and emails all tell me that the audience for It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton absolutely loves it. I am so honored and so grateful to know that it’s landing on listeners the way I hoped it would.

This first block of episodes was a learning experience for me. I had some stumbles that I’ll tell you about someday, but they weren’t insurmountable and I learned from those mistakes. I leveled up my skills as a narrator and I hear it in the work. I know how to do this, now, and I just have to figure out how to make it cost-neutral (with the expectation that it will eventually find sponsors and revenue sources that allow me to convert it to something I do every week as a job.) I have a meeting coming up with my business team to discuss all of that. As I said in my last post, my gut is pessimistic, but it does that to protect me from disappointment and I know that. My team is positive and enthusiastic about this meeting, fully expecting that we’re going to keep doing this. So I’m doing my best to trust that they have more experience than my gut in this regard, and I’m cautiously optimistic.

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It’s Story Time With Wil Wheaton is available wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

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This will be amusing to you, after you’ve listened to the podcast ︎