Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 12

see how we are

For most of last year, I worked on and promoted my New York Times bestselling (I’m gonna keep leaning into that until it gets super obnoxious, and then keep going to a little bit) memoir, Still Just A Geek. A huge part of my story is my survival of child abuse and exploitation, living with CPTSD and the that accompany it.

So it follows that for most of last year, I was picking at a barely-healed wound. When the promotion cycle wrapped up, I gave myself permission to just withdraw from public life as much as I wanted and needed to, so I could rest and regain my hit points. While I was resting, that wound I’d been picking at got infected and made me … not extremely sick, but sicker than I’ve felt in a long long time. So I did what you do when you’re sick: I went to the doctor, and I’ve been doing the work every day to get better.

We got the infection cleaned up, but the wound is still there. It’ll probably be there for the rest of my life, so I’m doing the work to heal it, let the scab do its thing, and eventually become a scar that I can’t feel. I can look at it and know that it represents all the work I’ve done to heal myself.

I haven’t wanted to talk about this at all because all those months of being vulnerable in public, revisiting the most painful and traumatic moments of my life, was a lot. I needed and deserve quiet, private time for myself to recover.

All of that is to give some context to what I’m about to share with you.

Last night, Anne and I went to the fancy premiere of Star Trek Picard’s final season at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Before the screening began, after we were all settled into our seats, Terry Matalas and Alex Kurtzman introduced the show, thanked the cast and crew, and turned the spotlight over to Patrick. He spoke lovingly and beautifully about the entire experience, in that Patrick Stewart way we all love.

As he was wrapping up his remarks, he said, “I would like to ask the cast who are here to please stand up,” so they could also be celebrated.

I remembered how humiliating it was, how much it hurt, those times Rick Berman deliberately left me seated while everyone else was standing up, those times Rick Berman made me feel exactly the way my father made me feel: unwelcome, unworthy, invisible. Not a great feeling.

But last night wasn’t about me. Yes, I have a wonderful cameo in season two, but I’m not in season three. And last night was about season three. It was about celebrating my family, who all came together for what is likely their final mission together. So I was happy to stay in my seat while they started to stand up. I clapped so hard my hands are still vibrating this morning. I applauded not just their work on this season, but everything they’ve given to Star Trek for over thirty years. I celebrated the absolute hell out of my family. And while I was doing this, I looked across the aisle at Frakes and clapped at/for him.

We made eye contact, and he gave me this incredulous look. “Why are you sitting down? Stand up, W!” He said.

So I did, and he applauded me, and I may have wept just a little bit. Or maybe a lot. I can’t remember. I was so grateful to be included in the moment by the man who I wish was my father, who loves me and sees me like my own parents never did.

My dad never made an effort to get to know me. It’s a choice he made, not some personality quirk, because he put a lot of effort into knowing and loving my brother and sister. My mom has gaslighted me about his abuse and bullying my whole life, forcing me to apologize to him when he hurt me. For a long time, I believed her lies and even tried hating myself as much as he hates me, hoping maybe then he would see and love and care about me. (Spoiler alert: it didn’t.)

A significant part of the pain I feel and the healing I continue to work on, is that awful black hole in my life where my father’s love should be. I’ve spent so much time there, I know more about it than anyone, certainly more than my manipulative, selfish, drunk of a mother who insists it doesn’t exist. I absolutely know my memories and my feelings and everything my dad chose to withhold from me are real, because I never once in my 50 years on this planet felt loved and accepted by my dad the way I felt and feel loved and accepted by Frakes. He’s always been there for me. He’s always made sure that I know I am part of a family, something my birth parents never bothered to do.

Later, at the after party, as I was saying goodnight, he said, “What were you doing, sitting down?”

“This whole thing tonight isn’t about me. It’s about you guys,” I said.

“No,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder, “this is about us.”

I felt so seen, so loved … and had to take a deep breath to force the tears back, and I said, “Thank you for including me, Johnny. You are the best dad I never got to have.”

And we hugged each other, and he told me that he loves me, and I told him that I love him back.

ask me how i know

This is a thing that comes up frequently. Someone wonders why Picard put Wesley, who was a teenager, at the helm of the Enterprise.

Surely, the argument goes, there are more qualified, experienced, adults on board who deserve the spot.

This most recently came across my Event Horizon, thusly:

“… The better question is how did this completely unqualified child get to actively pilot the flagship of the federation while others had to attend the academy for years and get multiple placements before even being considered.”

I NEVER respond, but today I felt like Wesley deserved someone to speak up for him, so why not me?

I replied:

“Okay, so. Disclosure: I am the actor who played Wesley. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about exactly this, because angry nerds have been yelling at me about it for 30 years.

“Remember that a being of extraordinary power and ability pulled Picard aside and said, “this kid is special. I can’t tell you exactly why, but it’s really important that you nurture and encourage him to the best of your ability.” And Picard listened. He heard that this being, who had literally just taken them where no one has gone before, and he followed his advice.

“And that eventually leads Wesley to become one of the Travelers.

“I’m sure that there are plenty of officers on the Enterprise who share your opinion. They’re pissed that this kid was promoted. They’re pissed that he’s a nepo baby.

“But they don’t know everything that Picard knows. And Picard is the captain of the ship, so he gets to make that call. And he doesn’t have to explain himself to anyone.”

And what I didn’t add there but will add here is: The Traveler from Tau Ceti made it very clear to Picard that Wesley and Beverly must never know that Wesley is special, the crew and everyone else on the Enterprise must never know. So all of the sudden, Wesley is given this thing he dreams of, and he absolutely knows he hasn’t yet earned it. How do you think this makes Wesley feel? I mean, we never saw it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist within the character and actor who played him. He wants to make Picard and his mom proud of him more than anything, and Picard promoted him? HOLY CRAP DREAM COME TRUE! But … wait. What’s going on? His peers are jealous of him and what he gets to do. The adults he is around when he isn’t on the Bridge quietly resent him for what they believe is unearned privilege. There are a a thousand people on the Enterprise, and Wesley probably knows maybe two dozen of them. Everyone else who sees him? All they see is the nepo baby, and Wesley knows it. He has MASSIVE imposter syndrome, and spends a lot of his time trying to understand why Captain Picard believed in him and gave him a chance. He can’t understand why that isn’t enough for anyone else. It’s Captain Picard, man! He made the call! Doesn’t that count for something?

Wesley’s dream has come true, and he can’t even celebrate it. Yeah, he’s a full ensign, a Starfleet officer … but he’s a kid who has never been to the academy and learned what being a Starfleet officer means, how to behave and exist around other Starfleet officers who have also gone through everything it takes to get a posting on the federation’s flagship. He is wearing the uniform without having gained the experience that he needs to fill it. He doesn’t know that Picard and the Traveler did this. He just knows that, now, he has to show up and prove that he actually does deserve it.

And this kid has never been in a place where it’s safe and okay to make mistakes and learn from them. And he knows that. At fifteen. It’s a lot. Now this kid has to carry around with him not just the responsibility that comes with the chair and the rank, but he also has to exist on the Enterprise where he passes people in the corridors, sees people in the canteen, waits in line to use the transporter with all these other officers who have never met him, and DEEPLY resent him for something he didn’t do. Wesley feels that resentment every single time, and it hurts like fucking hell. He will spend the rest of his time in Starfleet trying to prove to everyone that he was and is worthy of the promotion. And every single time he sits at the CONN, he knows that if he fucks up even a little bit, everyone he loves could die. He carries that with him, every second of every day. He feels it in every judgmental look, every whispered conversation, every challenge from a bully who has had one too many drinks. And when he doesn’t hear it from someone else, he hears it from a voice in his head. He can’t escape it, until he finally does and it all makes sense.

And, thirty years of Terran time later, after he’s spent more time being a Traveler, seeing and doing things you wouldn’t believe than he ever spent as a human, he’ll hear someone complaining about how he got that promotion someone else really deserved way back when, and it will hurt all over again, because the body remembers.

Ask me how I know.

buy the ticket, take your turn

It’s another one of those round up posts, like in the Before Times! Also, my silly choice to do that outrageous 90s theme (I bet you are all going to miss the dancing baby) has served its purpose, and now we are back to something a bit more readable.

Let’s get started with this thing from my Facebook:

So the phrase “you have too much time on your hands” came across my event horizon, as a response to a silly thing I did to amuse myself. I’ve heard this for my entire life, and every few years, I write a post like this about it. This is a slightly edited version of my response.

I doubt very much you mean to be hurtful when you say this. It’s just a silly thing you say, like “tell us how you really feel”. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a little joke.

About that. This is one of the most insulting, degrading, things a creative person can hear. We have all kinds of fun making something, and we put it into the world, and “you have too much time on your hands” devalues our creative experience. It’s another way of saying “don’t you have anything better to do?” Actually, dad, I don’t. This is exactly what I wanted to do with my time and energy.

I had exactly the right amount of time to make whatever the thing is. I choose to invest my time in doing something amusing, or silly, or whatever. “You have too much time” implies that this was a waste of the time I have, time that should have been spent doing something else, rather than the thing I chose to make, because it made me feel good to do that.

I am so confident that most people who say this don’t mean to be hurtful, and if you’re one of them, I hope you’ll hear me, as a creative person who has been dismissed like that his whole life, when I tell you how hurtful and insulting these words are. Don’t take my word for it, listen to all the other creative people who will reply to this, if they choose to share their experiences.

I’m not calling you out. I’m not putting you on blast, and I’ll ban anyone who brigades or attacks you. I’m just taking this moment to share this for you and anyone else who doesn’t want to be hurtful in the future. A teaching moment.

We don’t have too much time. In fact, nearly every creative person you ever talk to will tell you that we don’t have enough time. Please don’t dismiss us or the stuff we make.

Thanks for listening

NB: Facebook is bad for civilization. There is a future coming where someone researches and produces data which will show how absolutely destructive the whole damn thing is. There is a future where social media as it exists today is looked at the way my generation looks at DDT. We cannot believe it was ever a Thing, and the people who were poisoning us knew it all along. Facebook and Twitchan are a catastrophe for democracy and marginalized people. I can’t wait for the day to arrive when all of social media is regulated like tobacco and alcohol, and gets broken up into some parts that are less predatory and dangerous.

I just want to amplify my dear friend who is not here for anyone’s bullshit:

Okay. Let’s step out of that place and into something more fun!

I’ve wanted to round up some of the TV I’ve been watching:

Holy shit The Last Of Us is perfect. Flawless. Worth the entire subscription.

Netflix’s 1899 went from “interesting, compelling” to “steampunk LOST” so fast I gave up halfway through. The era of “weird for the sake of being weird, style over substance, vague hints of story instead of real character development, and we’ll sort of loosely wrap it up eventually” cannot end fast enough. Honestly, it should have died with Charlie. RIP Charlie.

Conversely, I had to force myself to not binge Wednesday, Brand New Cherry Flavor, The English, The Recruit, and Sandman. Highly recommend all of them.

This morning, I read a horrifying story of AI being used to determine child welfare cases in Pennsylvania.

The Justice Department has been scrutinizing a controversial artificial intelligence tool used by a Pittsburgh-area child protective services agency following concerns that it could result in discrimination against families with disabilities, The Associated Press has learned.

The interest from federal civil rights attorneys comes after an AP investigation revealed potential bias and transparency issues about the opaque algorithm that is designed to assess a family’s risk level when they are reported for child welfare concerns in Allegheny County.

[…]

Algorithms use pools of information to turn data points into predictions, whether that’s for online shopping, identifying crime hot spots or hiring workers. Many child welfare agencies in the U.S. are considering adopting such tools as part of their work with children and families.

Though there’s been widespread debate over the moral consequences of using artificial intelligence in child protective services, the Justice Department’s interest in the pioneering Allegheny algorithm marks a significant turn toward possible legal implications.

Supporters see algorithms as a promising way to make a strained child protective services system both more thorough and efficient, saying child welfare officials should use all tools at their disposal to make sure children aren’t maltreated. But critics worry that including data points collected largely from people who are poor can automate discrimination against families based on race, income, disabilities or other external characteristics.

(bolding is mine)

This was timely, as I just watched this short from Aperture about Algorithms a couple days ago.

tl;dr: algorithms are inherently racist, classist, and not at all neutral because the data used to train them is largely drawn from a system that has elevated the opportunities and privileges of CIS white men. It’s appalling.

Let’s stay at YouTube for a minute, because I said this was going to be fun.

I didn’t know about The Electric State until I saw this video. I bought it, and Tales from the Loop, immediately. If you like the things I like, I know you will be entranced by this video and the book that it talks about.

It’s going to be a movie? I just saw that when I looked for a link to the publisher’s page. Hmm. I hope they do it justice. I hear they missed the mark with Tales from the Loop, but I haven’t watched it yet so take that with a grain of highly radioactive 236 U.

We are so lucky to be on this planet at the same time as John Green.

Also, I noticed a Still Just A Geek coffee mug in the background of one of Hank Green’s videos and I’m not gonna lie: I squeed with extreme delight.

One last YouTube mention. I can’t get enough of CGPGrey. I don’t know anything about them, except that their brain is amazing.

This video is about choosing a theme for yourself, like “my theme for this month is reading.” or “my theme for this month is mindfulness.” The idea is to help us build on little successes that fit into a broad theme, rather than setting a single goal and feeling like a failure if we don’t complete it to our liking.

My theme since I turned 50 has been self care and gratitude. I’m spending all kinds of time working on healing my cptsd and trauma, and I’m showing up for myself every day to support that. I’m making a choice to work on specific things in therapy (EMDR has changed my life), and then do the hard work in between sessions to build on the insights I’ve gotten from my therapist.

I felt this fundamental shift beneath my feet last week. This HUGE thing changed in me. It’s so big, I can’t see all of it, you know? Like, I can just see this small part of it that I let go of, and until I get farther away from it, I won’t know what all of it is. I feel so good, so unburdened, that I have spent substantial time being suspicious of it. I legit wondered if I was manic, but after talking with my therapist, I’m pretty sure what I’m feeling is the lack of generalized anxiety that has defined my life for so long I didn’t realize it was there. “This is water,” as they say.

If you only take one thing away from this post: work on your shit. It’s worth it. YOU are worth it. And I’m going to tell you something that’s going to be upsetting: all your friends know you are lying to yourself, and to them, about your mental health. We can’t do anything to support and help you until you choose to be honest and do that incredibly hard work that is so terrifying.

In the land of music, I can’t believe how much I like Miley Cyrus’ new song, Flowers. I love her smoky voice and “fuck you I’m fabulous” attitude.

If you love 90s ambient like I do, I have a happy place for you to visit.

I’ve been listening to Alkaline Trio, Taking Back Sunday, Get Up Kids, Ataris, and all that fabulous early 2000s stuff we all associate with Warped Tour. Yes, I made a playlist at Spotify.

Speaking of, I had no idea that Spotify used so much shitty compression, until my son pointed it out to me with a side by side comparison to Apple Music. The difference between the two is astounding. Real quick: I hate Apple. Their UI is the worst. Their design is stupid and non-intuitive. Oh, how I hate iTunes. And Apple’s refusal to use open standards in messaging can get fucked.

But Apple Music is remarkable (The Linux client, cider, is amazing). The lossless sound is so much better than the over compressed shit Spotify squirts into my ears, and I had no idea until I put them side by side. Spotify is like putting a wet paper sack over your speakers, by comparison. Once you hear the difference, it’s real hard to go back.

Too bad Spotify didn’t invest in sound quality like they did in centering and spotlighting a conspiracy theorist. This is the year I let my membership expire.

Okay, last thing: I searched high and low for a really solid RSS reader that wasn’t full of crap. I eventually settled on Fluent Reader. You can grab the Appimage here, if you’re a Linux user like me.

Oh look the morning is behind me and now I’m late for work. Which will happen in a virtual desktop two clicks over, where I’m writing a brand new thing.

so you want to try an rpg, but don’t know where to start

This came from my Ask Me thing on my Tumblr thing.

Q: You seem like a pretty good dude, Wil. Thanks for taking time to chat with your fans, and thanks for standing up for what is right. I love following you on social media. You’ve talked about D&D before, and I’ve been kind of curious about trying it out. I would be nervous though as I have no idea what to do. Any tips for 40-year-old beginners???

A: Thank you for your kind comments.

D&D! I love it. I love all RPG games (even the ones I don’t like to play. I’m just glad they exist).

I’ve been playing since the early 80s, and I can confidently direct you to the 5e Starter Set. It is the best introduction to the hobby, to the system, to the experience of collaborative storytelling that makes RPGs so much fun and so special, that I have ever read or played. It gently introduces you to the concepts behind the system and hobby, eases you into the rules, and is filled with sidebars and further reading if you need that as you get deeper into the adventure. By the time you’re finished with it (there’s several sessions in there, probably a few months of gaming if you meet once a week), you will have enough experience to know what questions to ask at the Friendly Local Game Shop about where to go next. It’s a small investment, and a really easy way to find out if D&D is for you.

If you want to make an even smaller investment, this page has TONS of information and resources. You could start here and spend hours without noticing the time pass. Or, at least, I can. YMMV.

I want to share a few warnings with you.

Everyone has their definition of the “right” way to play D&D. You will find yours as you play. Don’t let someone else’s definition of “right” limit what yours may eventually be. Maybe you like minis. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you like homebrew rules. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just want to roll dice and imagine you’re a fantasy hero. Someone is going to tell you you are doing it wrong. We’ve worked real hard to kick out the gatekeepers, but they just keep spawning. Ignore them. Send them to me if you need to and I’ll handle them.The D&D rules system is not the only RPG, or even the only popular one. Pathfinder is beloved by millions of people. FATE Core and GURPS have enormous player bases. Monte Cook’s Cypher System is filled with gorgeous lore and character inspirations (but I’ve never played it, full disclosure). I chose the AGE system for our series Titansgrave, and used a lot of what I learned from running D&D for decades to customize the experience for me and the players. What I’m saying is, RPGs do not begin and end with D&D. It’s as good a place as any to start, but it is only one of many systems.You are going to hear hardcores make impassioned arguments that continue long after you have lost interest about all sort of rules and setting and system crap. Trust me: tune them out. Eventually, you’ll know what you care to listen to/All those non-D&D systems support and encourage playing in different settings, from Science Fiction to Horror to modern warfare combat. The thing that I believe makes D&D VERY special is its singular focus on high fantasy and everything that means in our culture. All those other systems do fantasy very well, but D&D is kind of the canonical “storm the dungeon, kill the monsters, take their stuff” experience. It’s also the only one that is D&D, if that matters to you.

That’s a lot more information than I intended to deliver. I just get excited about this stuff because I love it so much. Whatever you choose, I hope you have fun!

And when it counts, may you roll high.

a short rest

I worked on something wonderful today. I can’t wait to share more about it, when the time comes.

I had such a good time. I improvised bits, tried on different hats with the character until one fit just right, and then played with the hat. The director encouraged me to amuse myself, which resulted in a couple of surprising, hilarious, special moments. (Directors: thank you for supporting us and creating a safe place to be weird).

It was a long session, and I’m a stander (as opposed to a sitter) in the booth, so that takes its toll on my –motherfucker i hate saying this– fifty year-old body. But the performance had its demands (and rewards) too.

The thing is, I knew my strength was depleted when I left the session. My physical body was like, “Dude, you gotta ease into this. We’ve been doing a lot of sitting down.” What I didn’t find out until I got home about half an hour ago is that my mana was absolutely wiped. I discovered this when I excitedly took all the inspired, creative energy, the validation and satisfaction of a job well done, the absolute joy of being part of something I’m excited and proud to be part of, and I POWERED into my desk, ready to get to work on the writing thing I mentioned last week.

FUCK YEAH LET’S DO THIS!

open libreoffice and the fingers are in the home row and let's g-

That’s when the DM who is running my life tapped me on the shoulder and gently shook their head as they said, “You need, at minimum, a short rest.”

“Yeah, but I–“

“Minimum. In fact, even with that, you will make all creative decisions at a penalty until you have a long rest. Don’t be mad at me. I did not write the rules.” They gestured toward their dice. A subtle but clear threat.

Idiot that I am, I insisted that I make a saving throw to see if I could recover temporary mana just for this one thing. I cited a rarely used section of the rules, as one does in desperate times. I cross-referenced a 1986 article in the official magazine.

“I multiclass as a Healer / Bard, right? What if the Bard whose mana comes from charisma is wiped, but the healer whose mana comes from wisdom, may have a little something left in the tank? The bard could kind of rest while the healer does his thing?

The DM allowed it!

Imagine a d20 rolling as slowly and dramatically as you have ever seen. Use every trope: it lands on 1, it tilts to 12, back to 1, keeps rolling, tumbling across the table … is that a 15? A 5? Why didn’t I ask what the DC of the roll was? FUCK FUCK FUCK it’s almost at the edge of the table and

It hits the pen I use when I write in my notebook, kicks off back towards me, and settles on the number 19.

“How about 19? Does 19 work for you?”

Turns out 19 IS enough, when you aren’t murdering Eladrin in acid pits, Chris Perkins! ha ha boom gottem.

So here we are. You’re all up to date, and I’m glad you’re here.The Bard is resting, and the Healer is ready to write something. I wonder what I’ll blog about now.

This space here? This space represents me starting and deleting a lot of ideas, until

Oh! Okay. I got it. Here we go.

I once saw this thing that said “Be here now.” I feel like it was an album title for a band I didn’t like. Or maybe it was an advertising slogan. Maybe I should just look it up. Be right back.

Okay so it’s a movie I didn’t see, a book from 1978 I didn’t read, and a LOT of “Live, Laugh, Love” style samplers.

That Gen X part of me who dismisses everything and barely musters a “meh” if you really push him to reply to you dismissed that sentiment without any thought. “I am here now, stupid. I’d like to be literally anywhere else BUT here, in your fucking country kitchen from Target, thank you.”

Only today, while I was trying to make that saving throw, I needed a buff. The Healer, remember? So the Healer said to me, “Dude, you’re doing too much. You’re going too fast. You need to sit here in the sun and breathe. You have time. It isn’t even 4:20 (nice) yet.”

So I took some deep breaths. And the sun felt GREAT on my skin. I noticed the parts of my body that were warmer than others. I noticed how my black T-shirt was warming up and passing that warmth to my torso. I just sat there and didn’t worry about being anywhere else.

“Aw, fuck.” I said out loud. “I just got what ‘Be here, now,’ means, and I actually like it. I really, really, really like it. Fuck me.” Then I was kind of mad for a minute because it was so obvious, but also because fuck this stupid email signature quote for meaning anything to me, a person of great sophistication and endless Punk Rock. But I forgave myself real quick because I’m tired and maybe a little cranky because I didn’t sleep that great last night.

I got up, took the trash cans to the curb, because it’s fuckin’ Wednesday. On the way, I thought, “You know, I should be here, now, and not in my mom’s car, when I’m 9, going to an audition I don’t want to go to. I should be here, now, instead of watching a multicamera replay of some stupid thing I’m mortified about that nobody else in the world remembers. I should be here, now, with the stupid trashcans on fuckin’ Wednesday, and I should just sit in how good the work felt today. Take the fuckin’ win, man.”

I dragged the final can to the curb and the Healer spoke up. “Hey, instead of the word “should,” et’s reframe it: “You know, I can choose to be here, now … and so on.”

“Aw, fuck me again! That’s really good! It feels so empowering! Nice work,” I thought.

I came back into the house. I felt that warmth slowly leave my skin as I filled a glass of water. It’s in my Who Is Wil Wheaton? glass from Jeopardy. I allowed myself to be there for a quick second, because OF COURSE WE ALL WOULD, and then I was back to being here, now.

I like being here, now. That Gen X part of me? He is rolling his eyes so hard right now. He’s making all these deadpan jokes about how he cant’ wait to see me buy these words on weathered wood from wish.com. And hang them up in my vision room. In his defence, it kills with this extremely specific audience (me, up until I was … older than I want to admit) so you can’t blame him for giving the people what they — excuse me, the person what he wants.

Your values of Here and Now are unique to you. If you haven’t made a choice to be wherever they are for you in a minute, I encourage you to … ugh, I hate this: Be here, now. It feels kinda good, doesn’t it? Like, really take a moment. Feel where you are, and just be only there. Even if you only do it while you count to … try 10. Maybe go up to 20 or 30.

SEE? Stupid slogans actually meaning something that is genuinely helpful. Where do they get the nerve?

Okay, I’ve pushed the Healer as far as he can go, today. Now I’m going to go watch my mana refill itself, so I can start charging this thing I am so excited to write.

After a long rest. JEEZE.

With respect to the ongoing discussions and arguments reg...

With respect to the ongoing discussions and arguments regarding AI, I present a couple of images I coaxed out of Stable Diffusion this morning, when I asked it to help me make some Psychedelic Black Light Klingon posters…

Qapla’! tlhIngan maH!

With respect to the ongoing discussions and arguments regarding AI, I present a couple of images I coaxed out of Stable Diffusion this morning, when I asked it to help me make some Psychedelic Black Light Klingon posters…

Qaplame anywhere i don’t care! tlhI

It is 1987. The movie sold out, and there is no way we are going home early. There aren’t many places for us to go, and we only have like ten bucks, each, so this is where we end up.

I mean, not here, specifically, but if you are already smelling the old coffee, the smoking section, the rancid grease, and maybe I think that’s pie crust from this morning? You know what I’m talking about. You’ll find one in every town, you’ll see.

Bless all the servers who endured a table of teenage nerds who bought a single plate of fries to share and got refills of soda for three hours, tipped like shit because they didn’t know any better, and loudly argued about comic book characters when they weren’t even more loudly quoting Monty Python. We didn’t know how much we would come to retroactively appreciate you, and the safe place you were part of.

take me anywhere i don’t care

It is 1987. The movie sold out, and there is no way we are going home early. There aren’t many places for us to go, and we only have like ten bucks, each, so this is where we end up.

I mean, not here, specifically, but if you are already smelling the old coffee, the smoking section, the rancid grease, and maybe I think that’s pie crust from this morning? You know what I’m talking about. You’ll find one in every town, you’ll see.

Bless all the servers who endured a table of teenage nerds who bought a single plate of fries to share and got refills of soda for three hours, tipped like shit because they didn’t know any better, and loudly argued about comic book characters when they weren’t even more loudly quoting Monty Python. We didn’t know how much we would come to retroactively appreciate you, and the safe place you were part of.

2556 days

Today marks the seventh anniversary of my choice to stop drinking alcohol. That’s a nice way of saying “my choice to stop slowly killing myself and actually heal the childhood trauma I haven’t been able to handle,” which is a lot, but is also the whole truth.

I originally published this in January 2021, and I think it’s the first time I really talked in the open about my recovery from alcoholism. It’s an important part of my story that I and my editor managed to look right past when we were doing Still Just A Geek. By the time I realized I had left out some rather important context and information about how I got from the 28 year-old Used To Be to the 50 year-old I Am, we were too close to publication to make any changes. I’ve asked for extra pages in the paperback to include it, so we’ll see if that happens.

I have some new thoughts to add to this, but for those of you who haven’t seen this before, or who haven’t read it in a year, here it is with a few edits from its original publication:

Yesterday, I marked the fifth anniversary of my decision to quit drinking alcohol. It was the most consequential choice I have ever made in my life, and I am able to stand before you today only because I made it.

For probably three years, I knew that I was slowly and steadily killing myself with booze. I was getting drunk every night, because I couldn’t face the incredible pain and PTSD I had from my childhood, at the hands of my abusive father and manipulative mother.

It was unsustainable, and I knew it was unsustainable, but when you’re an addict, knowing something is unhealthy and choosing to do something about it are two very different things.

On January 8, 2016, I was out in the game room, watching TV and getting drunk as usual. I was trying to numb and soothe the pain I felt, while also deliberately hurting myself because at a fundamental level, I believed the lies the man who was my father told me about myself: I was worthless. I was unworthy of love. I was stupid. The things I loved and cared about were stupid. It did not matter if I lived or died. Nobody cared about me, anyway.

I knocked a bottle into the trash, realized I had to pee, and — so I wouldn’t disturb Anne — did not go into the bathroom, but instead walked out into the middle of my backyard and peed on the grass. I turned around, and there was Anne. I will never forget the look on her face, this mixture of sadness and real fear.

“I am so worried about you,” was all she had to say. I’d been feeling it for a long time, and I faced a stark choice that I had known I was going to face sooner or later.

“So am I.”

Roughly 12 hours later, I woke up with the headache (hangover) I always had. For the first time in years, I accepted that I brought it on myself, instead of blaming it on allergies or the wind.

I picked up my phone, and I called Chris Hardwick, my best friend, who had been sober for over a decade at that point.

“I need help,” I said. “I don’t think going to AA is for me, but I absolutely have a problem with alcohol and I need to stop drinking.”

He told me a lot of things, and we stayed on the call for hours. I realized that it was as simple and complicated as making a choice not to drink, one day or even one hour at a time. So I made the choice. HOLY SHIT was it hard. The first 45 days were a real struggle, but with the love and support of my wife and best friend, I got through it.

2016 … remember that year? Remember how bad things got? (2023 Wil hops in to add: Oh, you sweet Summer Child) I was constantly making the joke about how I picked the wrong year to quit drinking, while I continued to make the choice to not drink.

Getting clean allowed (and forced) me to confront why I drank to excess so much. It turns out that being emotionally abused and neglected by both parents, then gaslit by my mother for my entire life had consequences for my emotional development and .

I take responsibility for my choices. I made the choice to become a drunk. I own that.

But I know that, had the man who was my father loved me the way he loves my siblings, had my mother just once put my needs ahead of her own (or been emotionally mature enough to even acknowledge that I had needs), the overwhelming pain and the black hole where paternal love should be would not have existed in my life.

I made a choice to fill that black hole with booze and self-destructive behavior. That sort of put a weak bandage over the psychic wound, but it never lasted more than a few hours or days before I was right back to believing all the lies that man planted in my head about myself, and feeling like I deserved all of it. If he wasn’t right, I thought, why didn’t my mother ever stand up for me? If he wasn’t right, how come nothing I ever did was good enough for him? I must be as worthless and contemptible as he made me believe I was. Anyone who says otherwise is just being fooled by me. I don’t really deserve any happiness, because I haven’t earned it. Anne’s just settling. She probably feels sorry for me.

All of that was just so much. It was so hard. It hurt, all the time. Because my mother made my success as an actor the most important thing in her life, I grew up believing that being the most successful actor in the world was the only way she’d be happy. And if that would make her happy, maybe it would prove to the man who was my father that I was worthy of his love. When I didn’t book jobs, I took it SO PERSONALLY. Didn’t those casting people know how important this was? This wasn’t just an acting role. This was the only chance I have to make my parents love me!

The thing is, I didn’t like it. I didn’t love acting and auditioning and attention like my mother did. It was never my dream. It was hers, and she sacrificed my childhood, and ultimately my relationship with her and her husband, in pursuit of it.

I didn’t jump straight to “get drunk all the time” as a coping mechanism. For years I tried to have conversations with my parents about how I felt, and every single time, I was dismissed for being ungrateful, overly dramatic, or just making things up. Every single time I tried to have a meaningful conversation about my feelings, I was met with an endless list of excuses, justifications, denials. They just refused to accept that my experiences were true or that my feelings were valid. When the man who was my father didn’t blow me off, he got mad at me, mocked me, humiliated me, made me afraid of him. I began to hope that he’d just blow me off, because it wasn’t as bad as the alternative.

It was so painful, and so frustrating, I just gave up and dove into as many bottles as I could find. And I was varying degrees of a mess, for years. A functional alcoholic, is what I believe people like me were called.

But then in 2016 I quit, and as my body began to heal from how much I’d abused it, my spirit began to heal, too. I found a room in my heart, and in that room was a small child, terrified and abused and unloved, and I opened my arms to him. I held him the way he should have been held by our parents, and I loved him the way he deserved to be loved: unconditionally. I promised him that I would protect him from them. They could never hurt him again.

I realized I had walked up to that door countless times over the years, and I had always chosen to walk right past it and into a bar, instead.

But because I had made the choice to stop drinking, to stop hiding from my pain, to stop self-medicating, I could see that door clearly now. I could hear that little boy weeping in there, as quietly as possible, because he was so afraid that someone was going to come in and hurt him. Without alcohol numbing me, I clearly saw that my mother had been lying to me, and maybe to herself, about who that man was to me. I realized that the man who was my father had been a bully to me my whole life. I accepted and owned that it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t do anything to cause it. It was not may fault. It was a choice he made, and while I will never know why, I knew what had happened to me. I knew my memories were real, and I hoped that, armed with this new certainty and confidence, I could have a heart-to-heart with my parents, and begin to heal these wounds. I sincerely believed this time would be different, because I was different. My parents are people you can’t talk to. You have to write everything down so you can refer to it when they twist around what you said and meant. So I spent a lot of time carefully putting my words together, shared a lot of my feelings and fears, and finally told them, “I feel like my dad doesn’t love me, and I don’t know what to do about that.”

I know some of you are parents. What do you do when your child says that to you? What is your first instinct? Pick up the phone right away? Send a text right away? Somehow communicate to your child immediately that, no, that is not the case at all, and they are not unloved, right?

Of course you do, because you’re not a selfish piece of shit. But if you’re my mom, you ignore me for two months. Total radio silence. When you finally do acknowledge the communication, you spend paragraphs telling me how much your horse costs, complaining about some woman I’ve never heard of down at your barn, and several other things that you don’t even realize or care are a list of things that are more important to you than your son’s realization that his father — your husband — does not love him. Eventually, you get around to telling me how you are incensed and offended. How could I be so hateful and cruel and ungrateful? Why would I make up so many lies about the family? Nothing is more important than family! How could I say such hurtful things?! Why would I make all that up just to hurt them? If you’re my mother, you don’t even acknowledge, or allow for the possibility, that I am in tremendous pain, and have been for my entire life. If you’re my dad, you wait four months before you write an email titled “your mother wants me to email you” that I don’t even open, because everything is in that subject, isn’t it?

Well. There it was. I had changed. They had not. They will not. Ever. They are emotionally immature narcissists.

So, I want to be clear: I take responsibility for the choice I made to become a full-time drunk. But I also hold my parents accountable for their choices, including the choice to ignore me for weeks when, after a lifetime of failed attempts to be seen and heard, I finally confessed my deepest fear: that my dad didn’t like me, much less love me. I can not imagine ignoring my child, who is clearly hurting, the way they ignored me. When I used to do the bargaining part of grief, I always came back to the weeks of silence after I confessed that I, their eldest son, felt unloved by his father. I mean, who does that to their kid? After a lifetime drilling into his head that “nothing is more important than family”?

Their silence during those long weeks told me everything I needed to know, and my sobriety was severely tested for the first time. Everything I had always feared, everything I had been drinking to avoid, was right there, in my face. When they finally acknowledged me, and made it all about their feelings, I knew: this was never going to change. I mean, I’d known that for years, maybe for my whole life, but I still held out hope that, somehow, something would be different. I had known it, but I hadn’t accepted it, until that day.

During those weeks, I spent a lot of time on the phone with Chris, spent a lot of time with Anne, and filled a bunch of journals. But I didn’t make the choice to pick up a drink. I’d committed to taking better care of myself, so I could be the husband and father my family deserved. So I could find the happiness that I deserve.

Once I was clean, I had clarity, and so much time to do activities! I was able to clearly and honestly assess who I was, and why. I was able to love myself and care for myself in ways that I hadn’t before, because I sincerely believed I didn’t deserve it.

I will never forget this epiphany I had one day, while walking through our kitchen: If I was the person the man who was my father made me believe I was, there is no way a woman as amazing and special as Anne would choose to spend her life with me. Why this never occurred to me up to that point can be found under a pile of bottles.

Not having parents sucks. It hurts all the time. But it hurts less than what I had with those people, so I continue to make the choice to keep them out of my life.

After five years, I don’t miss being drunk at all. It is not a coincidence that the last five six years have been the best five years of my life, personally and professionally. In spite of everything 2021 took from us (and I know it’s taken far more from others than it took from me), I had the best year I’ve ever had in my career — and this is my career, being a host and a writer and audiobook narrator. This is what I want to do, and I still feel giddy when I take time to really own that I am finally following MY dream. It’s a shame I don’t have parents to share it with, but I have a pretty epic TNG family who celebrate everything I do with me.

I wondered how I would feel, crossing five years without a drink off the calendar. I thought I’d feel celebratory, but honestly the thing I feel the most is gratitude and resolve.

I am grateful that I have the love and support of my wife and children. I am grateful that because I have so much privilege, this wasn’t as hard for me as it could have been. I am grateful that, every day, I can make a choice to not drink, and it’s entirely MY CHOICE.

Because I quit drinking, I had the clarity I needed to see WHY I was drinking, and I had the strength to confront it. It didn’t go the way I wanted or hoped, but instead of numbing that pain with booze, I have come to accept it, as painful as it is.

And even with that pain, my life is immeasurably better than it was, and for that I am immeasurably grateful.

Okay, we’re back in 2023 now, and I’m so glad I read that all the way through. I’d forgotten some things and lost sight of others. I have some perspective again that I really needed today. As surprisingly good 2021 was, 2022 came in HOT. My memoir was released and I made the New York Times bestseller list for the second time (when they debuted the audiobook list, I was on it at number freakin’ one for Ready Player One. NUMBER ONE Y’ALL!). I mean, come on. That’s pretty incredible. Then I got to play on Celebrity Jeopardy THREE TIMES (my final airs next month). Oh, and I turned 50, which was not guaranteed as recently as eight years ago, when I was slowly drinking myself to death.

The most significant thing in the last year, though, has been a deliberate and consistent effort to heal as much of my cPTSD as possible. All the press for Still Just A Geek took a lot out of me. It was tearing a scab off a wound every day, exposing that wound to potential new infections, and then trying to clean and dress it before the whole thing started again. I don’t regret it. I did really good interviews and participated in public discussions centered on mental health care and abuse recovery that I know were meaningful to a lot of people. I’m sure the hard work I did promoting the book helped it get to the NYT list. But that work came with a hidden emotional cost I didn’t know to even look for. Since I finished, I’ve been doing EMDR therapy every week. I’ve been doing daily mindfulness exercises. I’m prioritizing my mental health in a way I haven’t, before, and it’s making all the difference. In fact, mental health care has been my theme since July, and is currently my theme for 2023.

None of this exists if I don’t make the choice I made 2556 days ago, that I have made every day since then, that I make today and plan to make tomorrow. But tomorrow is tomorrow, and I’m going to let today be today.

Hi. I’m Wil, and it’s been five six seven years since my last drink. Happy birthday to me.

Real quick: there’s a lot in this post and I want to take a moment here to tell you that if you’re hurting, there are wonderful people who are waiting RIGHT NOW to help you. I didn’t know that when I was suffering the most. I also didn’t have instant (and private) access to resources and professionals online to counsel me via my phone or laptop or whatever. I can’t tell you how to approach your journey, but I can show you two places you can start: https://www.mentalhealth.gov/ or https://nami.org/Home