Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 21

I am having the hardest time staying positive

I spent almost the entire day, yesterday, working really hard on something really awesome that I can’t talk about.

It felt so good to be working, to be creating something I know will eventually entertain people when it’s released. It was several days of prep and several hours of work, and I am grateful for every minute of it, because during the time I was working, I was focused on creating and entertaining. For a few hours, I didn’t have the overwhelming sense of doom and hopelessness that’s been knocking on my door for weeks. I’m grateful for that.

And yet, here I am, not even 24 hours later, right back in fear and worry.

For almost five months now, there’s been little to separate one day from another. Every day is a struggle to stay positive, and remember that there’s a small circle around Things I Can Affect, and a huge circle around Things I Can Do Absolutely Nothing About. I can usually accept that, but this week, Things I Can Do Absolutely Nothing About has just been too much to handle, and I feel like I’m going to cry, all the time.

I’m emotionally exhausted, and I’m struggling every single day with depression, feeling overwhelmed, low-key anxiety and the persistent background buzz of fear.

I know this doesn’t make me special, and I know that things could be so much worse (and I know that they are for so many people. I’m grateful I’m not one of them).

But I’m a person, and I bleed just like anyone else does, and I am just having the hardest time staying positive. I’m scared, I’m confused, I’m sad, I’m overwhelmed, and I’m doing everything I can to not slide into depression and despair, but today, I am REALLY feeling it.

No child deserves to be treated the way the man who was my father treated me.

Father’s Day is tough for me. I don’t have a dad, because the man who was my father made a choice, when I was a child, to be my bully, instead.

For my entire life, this man was implacable, inscrutable, and entirely unwilling to have any kind of relationship with me … yet he still felt entitled to my adoration an attention. Every day was a new puzzle to be solved, a new set of circumstances I had to figure out, so I could somehow evade his wrath and his cruelty.

In short, the man who was my father is an awful, selfish, cruel, racist, narcissist, and he made a choice to withhold his love and affection from me. Instead, he poured his rage, his shame, his scorn, and his cruelty into me. In my dysfunctional family, he made me the Scapegoat, and my mother went along with it.

I didn’t deserve it. No child deserves to be treated the way the man who was my father treated me. While he was bullying me, humiliating me, making me feel small and unworthy, my mother was enabling and protecting him.

And every Father’s Day, I was expected to worship and laud and celebrate that man, who may have contributed DNA to my existence, but is in no way, at all, my dad. I don’t have a dad, and I never did. I had a bully. Now, I have an endless black void where a father’s love should be, and it hurts every day. That man could have built a relationship with me, could have been a father to me, could have worked to build the same relationship with me that I’ve built with my sons, but he chose to bully me, and he invested a LOT of time and energy making sure I knew how contemptuous he was of me, and everything I did. (He didn’t have any compunctions about spending all of the money I earned when my parents put me to work against my wishes, but that’s a whole other thing. I’ve been able to earn more money; he’s the only person on this planet who could have been my dad).

So today is hard for me. I see pretty much everyone I know celebrating their awesome dads, who loved them unconditionally, the way a child deserves to be loved. I see them sharing memories of time spent with their dad, which I never got, because the man who was my father never made the effort. I’m doing my best to focus on how happy my friends are, and how lucky their children are, but it’s really hard for me to do that without feeling the massive black void where my father’s love and affection should be.

I want today to be a reminder of all the joy my own kids have brought me. I want to celebrate my own existence as a dad, to stand up and say that I did the work, I broke the cycle. I am not the selfish bully I had the misfortune of being born to. I’m a good man, and a good father. I love my sons, and we have a close and loving relationship. We don’t need a Hallmark holiday to celebrate and acknowledge the love we share, and my wife and kids know what a bastard my father was, so they’ve never imposed a celebration on me. But it still feels good when my boys call me their dad, and it still feels good when they tell me they love me. Being their dad is such a privilege, and I choose, every day, to be grateful for it.

Today, I’m going to make a deliberate choice to focus on my own children, my own experiences being the dad I never had, and I’m going to give a very special shoutout to my fellow children of bastards, who have the same complicated relationship with fatherhood that I have. This is a tough day for us, and if you grok what I’m saying, I’m so sorry. I see you, and I know.

A typical day on the set at Tabletop

This is from my Tumblr Thingy. I thought it would be relevant to some of your interests.

QUESTION: Hello, I have a question about Tabletop (don’t worry, it’s not “when will you make more

Throwback Thursday

drive the car around the world

Nothing is more important to me in my life than to be the father I never had.

Since we came into each other’s lives, I’ve worked so hard to love, nurture, guide, and cherish my boys. It’s so important to me that I never make them feel humiliated, small, unworthy, unloved, or any of the ways my father made me feel every day of my life.

I feel like I may have succeeded, because we are incredibly close, the three of us. We play games together, we hang out together, they seek my advice and my counsel, and I love it when they come to my house to spend time with their mom and me.

This quarantine has been tough for everyone, but it was especially hard to not have my family together. Ryan is an essential worker (on a medical leave right now. He’s fine, don’t worry. Thank you for your concern) so we couldn’t be in the same room as him until just about a week ago, which was two weeks after he took his leave from work.

Now that the four (five, counting my daughter in law) of us have been isolated for so long, we feel like it’s safe for us to do family activities again, like take long walks or get together for family meals.

Ryan came over a little bit ago, just because he wanted to be around his family. As I write this, my boys are playing Frisbee in the street, right outside my open window. They are laughing together, supporting each other, and enjoying the experience of being together, sharing some time together.

It makes me so happy when I see my boys love each other, and care about each other. It makes me feel like I did a good job raising them with core values of empathy, compassion, and respect for each other.

I keep seeing these stories of people who are going nuts because they’re forced into tight quarters for an extended period of time with their families. I have massive empathy for that. I especially empathize with single parents, and parents of smaller kids (and the hormonal teens) who are really struggling to adapt to our current circumstances. But I’m also intensely grateful that I don’t feel that way about my wife and kids. I’m intensely grateful that we all love and respect each other, that we’ve found ways to support each other, give each other space, and never stop loving each other through all of this.

Oh! The boys are coming into the house. Maybe I can convince them to do something with me.

IFC Midnight Acquires Retro Thriller ‘Rent-A-Pal’

I am so excited to share this with all of you.

About a year ago (or ten years ago, what even is time amirite) I worked on a FANTASTIC movie called Rent-A-Pal. It’s a retro thriller, and I am intensely proud of the project as a whole, and my work in it.

The thing about movies is, making the thing is just a small part of the whole process. The real barrier is distribution, so people can actually see the thing you worked so hard to make. It’s not uncommon for a film to be made and finished, yet never get a chance to find its audience, because it can’t find a distributor.

So it’s extra exciting for me to learn that Rent-A-Pal has been picked up by IFC Midnight! You can see this fantastic little movie I’m in, from the safety and convenience of your own home!

Here’s a little bit from the press release:

“Inspired by the real-life VHS tape, Rent-A-Friend: The Original Companion, Rent-A-Pal is set in 1990 and follows a lonely bachelor named David (Brian Landis Folkins). In a pre-Tinder media era, David is looking to find an escape from the day-to-day drudgery of caring for his aging mother (Kathleen Brady). While seeking a partner through a video dating service, he discovers a strange VHS tape called ​Rent-A-Pal bosted by a charismatic gentleman named Andy (Wil Wheaton). The tape offers him much-needed company, compassion, and friendship but Andy’s friendship comes at a cost — and David is desperate to pay that price. Amy Rutledge also stars.”

You can read the whole release at Deadline.

Selfish, ignorant people are going to make this worse. Don’t be one of them.

A gentle reminder: when we are out in the world, it’s incredibly important to maintain a six foot distance from each other. This virus doesn’t go away and stop being dangerous, because we walked into a building.

Most of us who are able to quarantine have been doing that, and it’s working to flatten the infection curve, to give our doctors and researchers time to find a vaccine and a treatment to reduce the mortality rate of this virus. Most of us aren’t sick, and we aren’t carriers. That doesn’t mean we should act like it when we are in public.

When we’re in public, it’s our responsibility to behave as if we are infected and we don’t want to spread Covid-19 to anyone else.

This means that we keep our distance from each other, even though it feels weird. This means we wear a cloth mask in public, even if it’s uncomfortable or whatever bullshit reason selfish people are using right now to justify their choice to ignore a simple and effective way to keep us safe. It means we respect one-way aisles in grocery stores, and we wait in those aisles, six feet apart, instead of pushing past our fellow humans who are shopping.

If the worst thing we have to deal with in a given day is the inconvenience of actively maintaining six feet from our fellow humans, to protect them and ourselves, there’s just no real excuse to ignore that, other than laziness and selfishness.

Let’s remember that we are in this together, and let’s make an effort to care for ourselves and for each other by making the deliberate choice to stay six feet away from each other, wash our hands frequently, wear our cloth masks in public, and never forget that all of us are going through this at the same time, together.

I know you aren’t lazy or selfish, but I know there are people in our lives who need a gentle reminder.

This is for them.

This whole thing we are living through is a lot, and it’s really understandable to want to get back to normal. The thing is, science and virology don’t care about your timetable, and until science and virology have a vaccine for Covid19, this is our reality. Wishing it would go away, and acting accordingly, is only going to make this worse. Refusing to follow medical guidelines, because you’re pissed off and frustrated is only going to make this worse. Ignoring medical advice because you’re bored and want to go to the beach is only going to make this worse.

Selfish, ignorant people are going to make this worse. Don’t be one of them.

Please, please, please be mindful and self-aware. I get that you’re stressed and frustrated and low-key scared all the time, and not just about getting sick. So am I. You’re worried about our terrible leadership, you’re worried about our cratering economy that our terrible leadership is making worse. So am I. You’re worried about this pandemic that we can’t control at all. Me too. You just want to get in and out of the store or wherever, the faster, the better.

So do I. So do all of us. But let’s remember that we are in this together, and let’s make an effort to care for ourselves and for each other by making the deliberate choice to stay six feet away from each other, wash our hands frequently, wear our cloth masks in public, and never forget that all of us are going through this at the same time, together. We can choose to be patient and make the best of a terrible situation, or we can selfishly make it worse for everyone, including ourselves.

Please choose to be kind. Please choose to be patient. Please do not be selfish.

Thanks for listening.

By request, an HP Lovecraft short story.

Since I started Radio Free Burrito Presents several weeks ago, lots of you have asked me if I would narrate something by HP Lovecraft.

I love the Cthulhu mythos, but I’m not crazy about Lovecraft’s storytelling. I feel like he spends a lot of time in the high concept and the world building, without ever really going more than skin deep on his protagonists and narrative characters. NB: I haven’t read a ton of Lovecraft, probably six or so short stories, so maybe he has a novel or novella with rich characters and narratives, but I haven’t found it.

None of this is to suggest that he wasn’t brilliantly creative and imaginative, just that his stories aren’t the most satisfying use of my time.

However, hundreds of you have reached out in comments and emails, asking me to narrate something from the Cthulhu Mythos, so today’s RFB Presents is a short, weird, lurid story called Dagon.

This wasn’t published until 1919, and was published again in 1923, so I take that as a reminder not to get discouraged when things take time in publishing.

The text I read is here: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dagon

 

Throwback Thursday

Radio Free Burrito Presents: A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift

A Modest Proposal is brilliant, biting, hilarious satire, that is as horrifyingly relevant in 2020 as it was in 1729. This reads like one of those brilliant editorials from The Onion, or a Hannity monologue.

I am embarrassed to admit that, until last week, I had never read this essay. I knew it existed, but I never made the effort, and I am so glad that I finally did.

My education wasn’t particularly diverse, broad, or focused on art and literature. I went to a parochial school for elementary education, and they were more interested in indoctrination and spreading religious propaganda than they were at actually educating us. We learned the sort of facts that can’t be denied, like math and stuff, but history, art, music, and literature were all presented from a clear and deliberate point of view that encouraged blind devotion and adherence, working backwards from a conclusion. I was never encouraged to ask questions, learn independently, or encouraged to challenge myself outside of the classroom.

By the time I was in middle school, I was struggling to deal with my abusive father, and I just did what I had to in school to keep my grades up and not fail. My teachers were fantastic, but the curriculum was very narrow, and there was little appreciation for art and literature in it. When I got into high school, I was working full time on Star Trek. I had a magnificent on-set tutor who took me all the way from grade 9 to grade 12, who encouraged me to do all the things my previous educators had not, but by that time it was just too late for me. I have regretted all of this, from the moment I became aware of it in my 30s, and I’ve been working hard to educate myself in the middle of my life, since I was not educated fully at the beginning of my life.

I am so embarrassed and disappointed that my education is a mile wide and half an inch deep. I realized this years ago, and I’ve been doing what I can to educate myself, using college lectures that are online, and by reading as much as I can, to expose myself to the great works of art and literature that my parents didn’t care about, and my educators didn’t teach me about.

There’s a ton of study available to you, if you want to go that way. Here’s the Wikipedia link to get you started:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modes...

This is about 26 minutes long, including my introduction. I hope you’ll listen, and I’d love your feedback, if you do.