Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 46

broadcasting on the deep space network

This is another one of those visual background noise things I like to make.

I used some public domain moving images that I found at Internet Archive, did a bunch of editing and filtering in iMovie, and then replaced the sound with a classic out-of-print ambient track from Earth to Infinity called Memphis to Mars.

I’m surprisingly happy with the way this turned out. When I watched it all the way through, it made me think of syncing Dark Side of the Moon with Wizard of Oz or Echoes with Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite. That wasn’t intentional, but I’m happy it turned out that way.

 

My Keynote Address to the 2016 Mensa Annual Gathering

Seconds before I started my address.

This is a slightly edited copy of my prepared remarks for the Mensa Annual Gathering. These remarks are meant to be heard and performed, so some of the nuance may be lost in the text.

Mental Hopscotch

If I’m so smart, why is my brain so dumb?

When Mensa invited me to speak to you tonight, it was easy to say yes. Though I am not a member – and I’ll get to that in a minute – my son is. In fact, he took and passed the test when he was 16, the youngest in his group. Joining Mensa was something he’d wanted to do since he was in sixth grade, and because I am a loving and supportive father, I thought that I’d help him prepare. I was in GATE, then AP, then honors, then Starfleet, so I figured that I could be a useful resource for him … and holy shit was I wrong. It was a humbling moment for me, eleven years ago, when I discovered that not only did my son not need my help, but I was wholly unable to give it. Like, I’m a smart guy, but as far as I am concerned, the Mensa test may as well be administered in Aramaic to subjects who are blindfolded and underwater. On Europa.

What I remember from the practice tests I looked at and then quickly ran terrified away from was that they tested my ability to reason and extrapolate the solutions to problems both complex and relatively simple, often from incomplete information. I didn’t have too much trouble with that part of it, but it was the math that killed me, because even though I’ve tried over and over again since I was in third grade, when it comes to math, I am talking Malibu Stacy.

Still, I accepted this invitation to speak tonight because one of my fundamental rules for living a successful and happy life is: don’t be the smartest person in the room, its corollary is: if you look around and see that you are the smartest person in the room, find a new room. This is the only way you keep growing and challenging yourself to be the most interesting human you can be.

The thing about that is … well, when you’re literally put on a pedestal in front of that room? It’s … really fucking terrifying to stand here. What could I possibly tell a room full of people who are smarter than me? Something geeky? Okay, that’s … well … right. Something geeky. Talk about something geeky that’s going to be relevant to a massively diverse group of people who probably aren’t judging me, but I’ll just proceed as if they are because that’s how my stupid brain works.

Okay … something geeky … something geeky …

I’m a geek! Everything in my life is geeky!

It’s going to be okay, Wheaton. Just sit down, and write about what you know.

Okay. I’ll do that … later.

And that’s what I did for months, you have not experienced procrastination in its purest, most distilled form, until you’ve been asked to give a speech to a room full of people who are MENSA members. On paper, it sounds like a wonderful opportunity! Here is the chance to talk about ANYTHING I want to talk about to a group of smart people! But I have to tell you – trying to choose what that topic should be evokes the same kind of anxiety that walking into a hardware store or art supply store can induce. All that straight up, raw potential – it’s exhilarating! It’s exciting! It’s enervating – it’s –massively terrifying and overwhelming.

I want you to imagine that you’re an explorer, hundreds of years ago. You are standing on the deck of your ship, and your crew is waiting for you to tell them where you want to go next. You look out toward the horizon and there is nothing but ocean in every direction. Now, you’re an explorer, so this is EPIC. No land masses, no birds, just uncharted sea that as far as you know eventually pours off the back of the turtle we’re on, and down onto the backs of all the other turtles that hold up our world, all the way down, because science.

If you’re an explorer, this is awesome, because you can just let the wind fill your sails and then you get to explore that vast, blank expanse of water until you find something. You get to make the map.

For me, this is terrifying, because I don’t want to make the map. I want the map to show me where I can go, and what I can expect to find when I get there. So it’s like I have this beautiful work of cartography with some land masses on it, a compass that’s really a butt if you look at it the right way, and, where I’m going, written in the most gorgeous calligraphy you’ve ever seen, the phrase “HERE THERE BE GEEKY THINGS.”

As recently as ten years ago, “something geeky” would have been easy to define, because those of us who self-identified as geeks or nerds – and who solidified our membership in our culture by arguing what it meant to be a geek or a nerd, and why you were one but not the other because the other was weird – we were all part of a relatively small subculture, and we found our way to the things that we loved (and continue to love) because we weren’t particularly welcome anywhere else … or at least we didn’t feel very comfortable there.

And, right now, it is delightfully and magnificently difficult to choose one geeky thing to talk about, because the thing is … we won, you guys. The geeks have absolutely inherited the Earth, and all the people who tormented us in our lives because we were smart and weird and couldn’t catch a football will be first against the wall when the revolution comes!

Yeah! Nerds rule! Good night!

[TRANSITION]

I eventually figured out what I was going to talk to you about tonight, and I hope you like it, but before I get there, you have been promised SOMETHING GEEKY, so I’m going to briefly go through some of the things that have been instrumental in making me the person I am today, all of them geeky.

Let’s start with science fiction, specifically in books.

In third or fourth grade, part of our curriculum was a monthly trip to a local library in Tujunga, California. One of the librarians would read us a short story, give a short talk about a literacy-related topic, and then let us pick a book off a table of paperbacks that we could keep. We were also allowed – no, encouraged – to check out up to three books, which we would have a month to read.

I was a nerdy, shy, awkward kid who was scared of everything, and the library intimidated me; I never knew where to start, I was afraid I’d pick a book that the Cool Kids would tease me about reading, and I always felt lost in the stacks. This librarian, though, reached out to me. She asked me what sort of things I liked on TV and in the movies, and recommended a few different books based on my answers, including the first real SciFi book I can recall reading, Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien. I loved it so much, when I went back the next month, she taught me how to use the card catalog to find other books like it, entirely on my own. On that day, the library was transformed from a confusing and intimidating collection of books into a thousand different portals through time and space to fantastic worlds for me to explore.

I don’t remember her name, but I do remember that she was in her fifties, wore epic 1970s polyester pantsuits, huge glasses that hung from a long gold chain around her neck, and had a hairdo that was ten miles high. She was friendly and helpful, and when she reached out to that nerdy little kid, she changed his life. If you’re a librarian today, you probably don’t hear this very often, but thank you. Thank you for making a difference in people’s lives.

I didn’t know it then, but one of the things that drew me to science fiction and then into fantasy was how it rewarded me for using my imagination. And it wasn’t just using my imagination to picture myself on a space station or riding a dragon; it was using my imagination to visualize and believe in a world where the things that made me weird and awkward would actually make me cool and valuable. And in using my imagination to experience that reality, I was inspired to work hard to create that reality. I know that I’m not alone in that. Over the last 25ish years, I’ve met engineers, chemists, scientists, astronauts, doctors, and professors who all chose their fields because they loved science fiction, specifically Star Trek, and even more specifically, the character I played on The Next Generation. Whether they are male or female, whether they were kids who watched our show when it was first on in the 80s, or if they are the children of those kids, they all tell a similar story of being inspired by a young person who could use his intelligence to be valuable to the adults around him.

To digress into that for just a moment: My character on Star Trek, Wesley Crusher, wasn’t beloved by everyone. In fact, while he inspired many people to challenge themselves to do great things with their lives, he also inspired some people to develop complex Rube Goldberg machines that resulted in his gruesome death and dismemberment, in ways that I have to admit are pretty creative and clever. I hope that at least some of those people went onto careers designing courses for American Ninja Warrior.

I bring this up because over the years, I’ve determined that the writers on Next Generation missed a huge opportunity to portray something that was happening to me at the time, something that I have learned is really common when extremely intelligent young people are put into an environment like mine: See, I was the only kid among a group of adults, and we were together five days a week, ten hours a day, and while I loved them and they loved me and we were very much a family, there was always a generation gap between us, because I was a kid and they were adults. When work was finished, they could all go out for dinner and drinks, and I went home to do homework. When Depeche Mode came to town for a concert, I couldn’t get them excited about it any more than they could get me excited about the Tower of Power show they were going to see, together, without me. And this created a tremendous amount of angst in me, because I so desperately wanted their approval, and I so desperately wanted them to think that I was as cool as I thought they were. I was very good at my job. I knew my lines … most of the time … and I got to work on time every day. I was present as an actor in the scenes we had together, and when it was time to shoot a scene, I was focused and professional. I could relate to the adults around me on that professional level, but it was impossible for us to have a similar personal relationship, because I was not just a teenager, but an awkward, nerdy, frequently obnoxious teenager who was too smart for his own good. For years, I’ve wondered what could have been, if the writers of The Next Generation had incorporated that kind of emotional conflict into my character. I wonder if that would have made him less of an idea and plot device, and more of a person, who screws up even when he’s trying his best, and then is so embarrassed by it that he can’t bring himself to apologize.

Epilogue to that whole thing, by the way: as I grew up, the generation gap got smaller and smaller and eventually closed entirely. Now, the rest of the cast and I are all just adults, some of them are my fellow parents, and we all hang out. Sadly, I was never able to help them understand why Black Celebration is superior to Violator, but it’s an imperfect world; screws fall out all the time.

So to go back to the pre-TNG years: my imagination was where I was most comfortable, and not just because I got to be the hero of every story I told, but because I was good at imagining things. I couldn’t look at anything and take it at face value. I was compelled to think, “yeah, that’s fine, but what if…?” and then I’d tell a story about it. This is not always awesome. Sometimes, my imagination gets away from me. I’ll look at a tide pool, and then glance up at the ocean beyond it, and completely freak myself out imagining that we are right now in something similar to that tide pool, and who knows that the hell is in the ocean beyond our perception.

I know I’m not alone in this. One of my favorite smart people in the world, the physicist Michio Kaku, wrote a book that changed my life called Hyperspace. At the beginning of it, he tells a story about how his parents took him to a botanical garden when he was small, and while looking at koi fish in a pond, he wondered what would happen if one of those fish was a scientist, and that fish scientist was pulled out of the pond by a human, then put back. That fish scientist would tell its colleagues that it had seen this amazing other part of the world that was just beyond the limits of their perception, and while it was in that world, it could even look back and see their world. Then, just as quickly as it was taken out of its world, it was put right back in … and no, it can’t replicate the experience because it has no idea how it happened and why are all of you other fish scientists looking at me like I’m nuts.

That story blew my mind when I was 17 and first read it. It fired up my imagination in a way that hadn’t ever happened before. It made a lot of sense to me. Nature likes to replicate tiny, simple things into incredibly complex things – like the basic, fractal patterns that you can’t unsee once you know how to look for them in everything from sand dunes to oak trees – so it stands to reason that we are in something like that pond, and there’s something just beyond the surface of the water that we can’t perceive, or even prove is there … and holy shit that’s awesome and terrifying all at once, and TO SERVE MAN IS A COOKBOOK.

That is one of the things that binds all of us geeks together, I think. We all have vivid and active imaginations, and we all, in our own way, look at the world around us and say, “yeah, but what if…?” For me, as an entertainer, I write and tell and perform stories that answer that question. For someone who is a physicist or a doctor or an engineer, they actually do something about it. And when everything works out, one of those smart people sees something that an entertainer like me did, and an entire generation takes for granted that they grew up with a phone in their pocket, the least interesting thing about it being that it makes phone calls. I mean, it’s really distracting when my camera rings, or I get a text message in the middle of a game of Carcassonne, and it can be catastrophic to get an email popup notification when I’m in a timed challenge playing Alphabear.

So I guess this is a good time to talk about that other geeky thing that was instrumental in shaping my human existence: gaming. Specifically, Tabletop gaming.

[There’s a big edit here. I cut about 2500 words that come from The Happiest Days of Our Lives.]

Of all the things I do that make me a geek, nothing brings me as much joy as gaming. It all started with the D&D Basic Set, and today, it takes an entire room in my house to contain all of my books, boxes, and dice.

That time in my life I talked about a few minutes ago, when I was feeling weird and confused and frustrated and my awkwardness was set to maximum? That’s when tabletop gaming became the foundation of the best friendships I’ve ever had, and it’s the mortar that has held my group of friends together for almost 30 years.

And like science fiction, gaming inspires my imagination, because when we play a game – any game – we are using our imagination to bring a world to life, and that’s truly special, because while all destruction is essentially the same, when you create something, it’s different every single time. When you create something together, you’re building bonds with your fellow gamers that could last for your entire lives. The Venn Diagram of my best friends, my gaming group, and people from high school I still hang out with is one perfect circle. And the whole reason I created my show, Tabletop, was because I wanted to help other people find the same joy, the same friendships, the same enduring relationships that I found, because of gaming.

[TRANSITION]

The last geeky thing I wanted to talk about before I get to what I’m actually going to talk about is what it means to be a geek, or a nerd.

When I was young, and those magical pocket phones I spoke of only existed in speculative fiction, I privately mocked jocks for their tribalistic football rituals the exact same way that they openly mocked me for playing D&D, never realizing until very recently that though we loved very different things, we loved them the same way, and that’s when I started talking about how being a geek isn’t about what you love; it’s about the way that you love it. My friend John Rogers once observed that Fantasy Sports is D&D for jocks, and I love that, because it means that everything is geeky if you do it right. (Parenthetically, I won my Fantasy Baseball league year after year by drafting overvalued fan favorites early, and then trading them to people who didn’t understand sabermetrics. Because, you know, game theory and stuff.)

I mean, that’s the really great part about being a nerd, isn’t it?

A normal person just turns on their computer, and is happy that it works. A normal person can’t understand why you’d want to compile your own linux kernel on a slackware installation that you’re running on a virtual machine, but I wonder why you wouldn’t want to do that.

A normal person sees a movie and enjoys it. They maybe even talk about it a little bit afterward. But we see a movie as source material for our fan fiction, headcanon, and thousands of hours of … lively … discussion about our fan theories.

A normal person turns on a light bulb, and never even stops to think for a second about how much Edison screwed over Tesla, and they probably don’t even want to attempt to build their own Van de Graaf Generator or Tesla Coil.

Where a normal person sees something like … a slice of sourdough bread, a baking geek sees a starter that’s been carefully fed for years, wonders how long the dough was allowed to rise, and was it folded? Or was it punched and kneaded? Or maybe it’s no-knead! Maybe I can get some of that starter, grow my own starter from it, and then do a side by side comparison of my own loaves, accounting for humidity, ambient temperature and oh god I forgot that there are fifteen people in line behind me and I haven’t ordered my sandwich, yet. In my defense, he did ask me if I wanted to try their new sourdough bread.

So when I think about what it means to be one of us, when I think about what it means to be a geek or a nerd or a dweeb or a dork or a doofus or a weirdo, I think that it means that we love things in a uniquely enthusiastic way. And we get so excited about the things that we love, that we can’t help but share them with other people, long after they’ve lost interest and really just want us to tell them if we want the sandwich toasted or not.

And while our enthusiasm for our the things that make up what we tend to think of as “geek culture”, is awesome, I have to say something about that:

We don’t get to decide what the right way is to be a geek about a thing. We don’t get to decide who gets to buy a ticket to Comicon any more than a baseball fan gets to decide who gets to buy a ticket to see the Dodgers (oh, side note: fuck you, Time Warner Cable. Give me my goddamn Dodgers back on television you scabby bawface dobbers).

And I can go on and on about how those of us who are elder geeks probably feel like it’s just so damn easy to be a geek right now, the damn kids today don’t know how good they have it!  And if everything is geeky, maybe nothing is geeky, and that means that gatekeeping in geek and nerd culture is a pointless waste of time. So when someone tells you that they love X-Men, or Game of Thrones, or Star Wars, or learning to program in Python, the best way to respond is with a high five (or sci-five), not a pop quiz and a summary judgement. Because every single one of us, when we were protonerds, we met someone who said, Oh, you like this thing that I like? Cool! Let’s like it together, and meet some other people who will like it with us. And, BOOM: the first Star Trek convention happened. And it was awesome, and then there were conventions everywhere for everything nerds loved, and it gave us a place where we could be who we were without being afraid of the cool kids making fun of us

HASHTAG PRIDE

And when shitty corporations tried to turn conventions into an efficient way to separate fans from their money, it was people like us, who shared our passions and enthusiasm, who stopped them, and made conventions about celebrating the things we love.

So, if I may: it isn’t enough to be kind and welcoming to the people who want to join us in celebrating all the amazing things that we love. When we see someone being a gatekeeper, we have to walk right up to them, say “don’t be a dick,” and bring that person they were trying to keep out right into our clubhouse. Because the next Joss Whedon or Elon Musk or Kelly Sue Deconnick is just discovering nerd culture for the first time, and I promise you that we want them to be part of it.

[TRANSITION]

Okay, we have talked about some geeky things, as promised. I am now going to talk to you about something that I think is the geekiest thing of all, a thing that most of us have in common, regardless of which particular part of geek culture we hold closest to our hearts: anxiety.

I have this thing called Imposter Syndrome, and I guess it’s fairly common among creative people. The way it works is this part of my brain that’s supposed to be on my side but is really a dick about everything goes, “You know, you suck at everything and you don’t deserve to be here and nobody likes you because you suck. Boy do you suck. You are the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.”

This voice is relentless, even though I’m supposed to be successful enough to ignore it and show it physical evidence of its bullshit in the form of awards and a happy marriage and two awesome kids, it never, ever, ever shuts up. But while I was preparing for tonight, it overplayed its hand. It filled me with so much anxiety, it reminded me of an article I read about a study which indicated that highly intelligent people tend to have generalized anxiety and other mental health issues at a rate that is significantly greater than a control group.

And when I read that, I knew that I wanted to talk about it. because it doesn’t matter if I’m just a writer or just an actor or just a geek or just any of the things my stupid brain tells me I “just” am. All of us here, at one time or another in our lives, have had a hard time relating to people who just don’t get us. We are constantly surrounded by people who just see a loaf of bread, or don’t care how things work, as long as they work. They don’t stay up at night, unable to sleep, because they can’t stop thinking about how thin our atmosphere is, relative to the size of our planet, and how terrifying it is that we’re basically these tiny little things on a giant hunk of rock speeding through space at like 30 kilometers per second and what the hell is space, anyway? And if we really are in a computer simulation, what’s the computer running it in? And can I somehow break out of the program to find out? Wait. If I can think that, it’s just part of my programming so does that mean that free will is oh hey the sun is coming up and I haven’t slept at all.

And it’s not that we want to do this, right? It’s that we can’t help it. It doesn’t matter if you’re an engineer, an artist, an athlete, or a blacksmith. Look around you – everyone here has their own internal monologue. It’s what separates us from animals, that constant conversation going on in all our heads. And when we feel nervous about something – that voice is what helps us rise above the fight or flight instinct of animals – it can soothe us, talk us down, talk us up – or in some cases – blather on and make things worse. When you’re smart, and faced with a problem, this voice starts to break things down, so you can solve it. “Here is the problem. Here are its individual pieces. Now, how do we solve this rationally and logically.” It is not unreasonable to expect that by breaking down a problem into pieces, we should be able to make those pieces follow rules. And rules are comfortable and comforting and make us feel safe.

But anyone who has ever tried to reason with an unreasonable person knows that more frequently than we’d like, the pieces just will NOT follow the rules, even though they should follow the rules, because that’s the simplest and most efficient and most logical way to get things done. And here comes that voice again, only this time it’s telling us that everything is terrible and nothing will ever follow the rules and we’re all going to die and the frogurt is also cursed.

That voice speaks to me almost every day, and if I could just make it stop, I would, but I have mental illness. I have anxiety and depression, and I want you to know that if you do, too, you are not alone. If you’re like me, you get frustrated that the thing that makes you special, your big beautiful brain that is so smart and capable of so much more than some muggle’s brain is, actively fucks with you every day.

And it makes you wonder: If I’m so smart, why is my brain so dumb? Why can’t my brain just get with the program, and stop worrying about everything all the time? My life is great! I love my job. I love my family. I love my home and my pets. I love everything I get to do in this amazing world, and I haven’t even scratched the surface of what there is to explore on this planet! I make art that matters and I inspire people to do cool stuff … so why do I feel so terrible about myself all the time?

Oh, right. Because my brain is broken. There’s all sorts of interesting medical and neurochemical reasons for it, and I’ve learned everything I can about them, but knowing all of that isn’t enough to make my brain magically start processing serotonin and norepinephrine and dopamine in a balanced way, so that I won’t feel like my career is over when I’m not cast in The Dark Tower or Ready Player One,and feel like nothing is worth doing for days at a time, even though I know how irrational that is.

This is where being really smart is kind of the worst. All the skills that we’ve learned over the course of our lives, the things that set us apart from average people, they really don’t help. In fact, the frustration that we feel when those skills don’t work can actually make it all worse, because it’s not only unfair, it’s irrational! It isn’t following the rules, and this isn’t Vietnam, Dude.

And it makes you feel really, really alone. Like, you are the only person who has ever felt this way, and the only person who ever will feel this way, and if you just tried a little harder, you wouldn’t feel this way. But you do feel this way, because you’re alone. Yep, you’re alone and nobody can help you. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprised if you’re the only one with this infernal internal monologue. Look around you – nobody else seems to have this problem. It’s just you.

But that’s not true. Even when it feels like it’s the most truthful thing in the history of human existence, it’s a lie. I know this, because I have depression, and I know that depression lies. It lied to me for months while I was trying to put this talk together, tag teaming with its best friend, Anxiety, so I reached out to some of my friends, and asked them for help. And it took a little while, but they helped me find my way out of that terrifying darkness and back into the sunshine, where I was able to put this whole thing together.

And I know that this doesn’t apply to all of you in this room, but statistics and personal experience tell me that it applies to enough of you that it’s worth saying: you’re the only one with your point of view, and the voice in your head is unique to you – so when that voice starts being negative or irrational, it can feel super weird to reach out and ask for help – how can anyone else understand what’s going on, or what you’re feeling if they cannot get in your head?

But you must. And I’m not using the second person plural as a generality – I am really talking to YOU. ALL OF YOU sitting out there. YOU must ask for help when anxiety makes you feel out of control. Because we need you. We need you to be well and whole and taking care of yourselves. I know that the prevailing rise of anti-intellectualism that’s plaguing our world right now can be unbelievably depressing. I know that it’s hard not to go to bed forever when you read about people googling “what happens if the UK leaves the EU” AFTER they’ve voted to, you know, leave the EU. Or hear that people are “sick of experts.” But, and I have to believe this, or I may just be the one who goes to bed forever – but eventually the pendulum will swing back. The world needs smart people, because smart people are the ones who figure shit out. Smart people are the ones that don’t throw away the petri dishes because some mold got on them. Smart people don’t cut down apple trees in anger because the damn apples keep falling on their heads. Smart people  –  look, YOU guys are the SMART people, I don’t need to keep giving you examples.

Here’s what I need you guys to do. I need this entire room of people to make a pact. It’s just us, so what happens here in beautiful downtown San Diego, stays in beautiful downtown San Diego. So here it goes. You are the superheroes we need. But the world doesn’t know it yet. But they will. And something cataclysmic will occur, and the world will cry out, “who will save us?” And I need you to be ready to burst out of the crowd, rip open your shirt to expose your true identity and say proudly, “I’m ready! I am the SUPERHERO YOU NEED!”

But you won’t be ready for the day we need you if you don’t take care of yourself. I’m not saying go all Dark Knight on us and build an industrial bunker underneath your house or physically train like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, which I know seems like a reference out of left field, but that’s my go to movie montage of someone working hard at being physically fit, because of reasons.

What I mean is, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by your internal monologue, and the voice delivering it is no longer a friendly one – please – don’t be afraid to ask for help. One of the most insidious lies mental illness tells us is that asking for help, or taking medication to get better means that we are weak. It means that we are a failure, and we somehow deserve to suffer.

This. Is bullshit. You don’t deserve to suffer. You are not weak. You are not a failure. Your brain, like mine, needs help to keep its profoundly complicated machinery working. Depression lies, and when it tells you these lies, you can look right back into its stupid face and say, “Shut up. Wil Wheaton told me that it’s okay to get help, and he pretended to live in outer space, so he outranks you.”

I love being a nerd, and I love having the tremendous privilege to occasionally stand up in front of other nerds, and talk about what it’s like when you’re us, and if you’ve heard something useful or even inspirational tonight, I hope that you will be me to someone else. Because we’re all we’ve got, and in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep because I can’t stop thinking about how rapidly our species is destroying our planet, and how many stupid and dangerous people have the ability to wipe us out in the blink of an eye, it helps to know that there are smart, compassionate, empathetic nerds in the world to stop them.

We need you. So please take care of yourselves.

And play more games.

Thank you for listening to me.

I’ve been busy. Here’s Marlowe.

I hope your summer is going well. Mine’s been busy, in a good way.

Not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

Doing the reboot check-in a little early this month, because I’m going to be too busy at the end of the month to do it then.

So last time, the big question was:

The real challenge this month, and the 54,000 dollar question is: is it worth it?

Objectively, yes. Yes, it’s worth it. I’ve stopped seeing the significant changes and rewards that were happening in the early months of making these major and fundamental adjustments to my life. That’s to be expected, and it’s important to stay focused on the positive benefits of the long term commitment, even when the short term rewards aren’t as substantial as they were as recently as 60 days ago.

Because I have the delightful bonus of living with mental illness, it’s an additional challenge for me to identify when my Depression is lying to me, and then separate the irrational lies and their related feelings from objective truths. This month, and probably going back into much of last month, my Depression has been a real dick. It’s been taking tiny, unimportant, insignificant things that really shouldn’t matter, and blowing them up into catastrophic things that are totally about me (even when they really aren’t). I’ve been having a super neat existential crisis as a result, and I’ve just now realized — like, literally at this moment (11:25 am on 22 June 2016) — that if I wasn’t taking care of myself with these reboot choices, I would be really messed up and in a very bad place. Having these seven things to focus on and work on has given me a positive way to feel empowered, because I’m doing something about feeling kind of stuck and frustrated.

So before I get into the specific things, let’s do this in a couple of broad strokes.

First, my physical health is great. I’m at my target weight, and I don’t have any chronic aches or pains. My diet is healthy, and even though I’ve definitely developed a whole thing for ice cream, it’s in moderation — in fact, everything in my life is in moderation — so it’s not a problem.

Second, my mental health isn’t as good as it could be, but thanks to the patience, kindness, and advice of some wonderful people in my life, I’ve been able to work through this most recent existential crisis, and while I’m not like, “feeling fine“, I’m getting there. There’s a lot to unpack, and it’s all pretty personal, so that’s about all I’m going to say about it for now.

Finally, since I started making these changes a little over six months ago, and especially since they’ve more or less become routine in the last six to eight weeks, I’ve stumbled into a lot of clarity about the fundamental reasons I was unhappy, frustrated, adrift, unfulfilled, and needing to make big changes to my life in the first place. That clarity has been valuable and super useful, and will ultimately lead me where I want to go … but at this moment, it’s uncovered a lot of pain and sadness that was being covered up by bad habits and all those things I decided to change. This is really, really good, even if the in the immediacy of the moment (exacerbated by depression) it’s making me uncomfortable. Again, it’s a lot of personal stuff, and I’m not going to go into it, but I bring it up because I suspect that someone who is at the same point in their personal reboot is feeling some of the same things, and because it was reassuring to me to know that it’s a normal and healthy part of the process, I’m sharing it.

Okay, so let’s look at the specifics and see how it’s going.

Drink less beer.

Crushing this. Not only am I not drinking beer or any alcohol, I’ve completely lost interest in it. I don’t miss it, and I don’t feel like it’s the huge sacrifice that it felt like as recently as three months ago. The only times I miss beer is when I’m at someplace like Stone Brewing Co., and there’s a ton of magnificent and rare and delicious things available to me. I’m not an alcoholic, so I could probably just have a beer and it wouldn’t be a big deal, but there’s something empowering and awesome about just not doing that. I’m going to see how this particular part of my whole thing is after a year, and reassess it then. My suspicion is that I will still not miss it, though I may have a sip here and there. A+

Read more (and Reddit does not count as reading).

Not very good this month. I feel like I should be reading at least 50 or 100 pages a day, and I’m not anywhere close to that. Part of that is because I read before bed, and I’ve been so tired that I can only make it ten or so pages before I fall asleep, and part of it is that I’ve been doing other things with my time during the day. I’ve been reading a biography that’s a lot of fun, and I should have finished it by now, but since I only have so much discretionary time in my life, reading has been taking a backseat to watching more movies. I think this is because reading inspires me as a writer, and while I’m definitely feeling inspired to write more, I’m feeling this hunger that has felt like starvation for acting, filmmaking, and performing for an audience recently. Watching movies (good movies, not junkfood movies) and really good television helps me remember why I want to be an actor, and inspires me to do the work I need to do if that’s going to be part of my creative life. I feel like I should get a C on this one, but we’ve all had that one teacher who acted like their class was the only one you were taking, and the reality is that we only have so much of ourselves to go around, so all of our attention sliders can’t be at 100 in each category. I’m not going to be too hard on myself this month, and curve it up to a B.

Write more.

I finished the draft of a short story that I was afraid to touch for a long time. I’ve made progress on another thing that I lost interest in because I got work as an actor when I was writing it, immediately followed by three weeks of Tabletop production that took over my life. I want to and should be writing at least 500 words a day, and that’s not hard. This one is all about discipline, and I just haven’t had it. So even though I’ve finished something, and I’ve made minimal progress on one of the seven things on the whiteboard, I’m giving myself a C.

Watch more movies.

This was an easy one this month. Between MUBI and Hulu, I’ve been tearing through really great movies, many of them classics, and I’ve been enjoying them so much, I want to take a class on deconstructing and understanding film, because while I have tons of experience with and pretty good instincts for filmmaking, I don’t really have formal education, and therefore don’t know how to talk about and learn from great works of art. I get an A, because the point of this one is to find inspiration, challenge myself, and enrich my artistic side.

Get better sleep.

I’m doing what I can do, but I haven’t slept well this month. Marlowe just got clearance yesterday to be off the leash (she had major knee surgery two months ago), so Anne and I have been taking turns sleeping with her in the guest room. The guest room bed fell apart last week, though, and I’ve been on the pull-out sofa in my office with Marlowe for seven days, and oh my god the headaches every morning and the aching back and pain in my hip and I’m too old for this shit. I’m backing off caffeine in the afternoons, though, and drinking tea before bed. I’ve also been taking anti-anxiety meds because holy shit that’s been a huge fucking thing, and they help me sleep more and better. But this isn’t necessarly a grade for the quality of my sleep, as much as it’s a grade for my personal efforts and commitment to getting better sleep. So I’m going to give myself an A.

Eat better food.

Our refrigerator shit the bed a week ago, and the repair can’t happen until tomorrow. So we have a powered-off, empty refrigerator, and I didn’t realize how much I take ice for granted. I’m able to have my protein powder and greens every morning, and we have been able to buy stuff to cook for dinner on the same night, so we’re eating surprisingly healthy, all things considered. But lunches haven’t been that great: lots of burgers and deli sandwiches and pizzas that I wouldn’t normally eat every day (more like once a week or so). It’s out of our control, but we’re not doing too badly, but I probably don’t need ice cream every night, so I’m going to give myself a B (even though I haven’t been able to have ice cream every night, because when I go to the ice cream place, I … um … well, I make up for it.).

Exercise more.

Oh a big fat F, and that’s just because the F- isn’t real. Yeah, it’s been hot as shit here, and I was working my face off, but if I was committed the way I need to be, I’d be up early in the morning, or walking at night when it cools off. I haven’t run in over a week, and even though my baseline physical health is good, I haven’t even been getting to 5000 steps in a day. So not only is this an F, there’s a note here that says “in danger of failing the course”. F.

So I’m going to total this up now and see … 21 out of 28 points, which gives me about a 2.8. That’s not the worst, but it can be much better.

As I said when I started this, it’s definitely worth it, and I’m thinking about what I can add or modify going forward, to help me achieve my goals. It’s like … well, I’ve gotten this car out of the mud, and it’s mostly cleaned up. Hey! I found a map in the glovebox that I forgot was there! I guess I’ll take out that map and use this clean and functional vehicle to get back on the road, so I can make use of the map that I didn’t realize I had.

The Magician’s Path

 

I’m taking a little victory lap here, because I just finished the second draft on a short story that I’ve been mucking about with for a long time. It’s no long — just over 3800 words — and it’s called The Magician’s Path.

Here’s a little bit:

The Magician sat alone in his study, and practiced his magic. He conjured small creatures who existed briefly before vanishing in a burst of fragrant smoke. He extinguished the torches with the wave of one hand, then drove the darkness away with the other. His magic was passable, and he was quite good at it, but the Magician wanted to be a true Wizard, and to become a true Wizard, he needed an apprentice to train.

In those days, though, an apprentice could not be recruited or even sought out. In those days, an apprentice had to come to a magician of his own volition, and ask to be trained. It was through the training that the apprentice would become a magician, and the magician a Wizard.

The Magician spent many years perfecting his tricks, and understanding the ways of magic. When a young apprentice finally appeared at his door, the Magician would be ready.

The year was young, though winter was at its deepest and coldest when the boy arrived. He was very young, and though the Magician had waited so very long, he was not sure that one so young could be taught, that one so young would be willing to do the challenging and unrewarding work that went into mastering magics. He told the boy these things, but the boy pleaded with him. “I am very young, but I am honest and dedicated,” the boy said. “I will study and I will learn and I will work as hard as I must.”

My instinct as a blogger (I’ve been at this thing for over 15 years) is to publish the whole thing right now, because I like it, I’m excited about it, and I want to share it. But my instinct as a writer is to sit back on it for a little bit, get into the next thing, and then come back to this for one final pass before I release it.

It isn’t a lot, but it’s something where there wasn’t something before, and it’s something that I started and finished. I’m not gonna lie, Marge: I feel pretty good right now, and I haven’t felt pretty good in a long time.

A ghost in daylight on a crowded street.

“You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.” -WSB

I set these very high standards for myself, and constantly struggle to meet my own expectations. In one way, that’s good, because it keeps me motivated and prevents me from getting lazy or complacent. In another way, it makes it really hard for me to ever sit back and go, “Hey, I did a thing. Good for me.”

So looking back on the last week or so …

I’m not as productive as I need to be. I’m sleeping more, but not well. Nightmares are frustratingly common, even if I don’t clearly remember them when I wake up. Lots of snakes and floods. I have developed this generalized anxiety that’s sort of like a background hum in my life, and it’s getting so persistent, just ignoring the hum is starting to become a full-time thing. It’s exhausting. I am watching a lot of movies and TV, but I’m staying up really, really late and I’m not sure that’s particularly good for me. I’m reading every day, but not a whole lot.

I feel like I’m doing a lot of stuff, but I’m not getting anything done.

But I did make this dumb thing in gimp today, that is a thing where there wasn’t a thing before:

I took the source picture at Hollywood Forever Cemetery when Anne and I went to see the premiere of Outcast (it’s great and you should watch it). I was goofing around in gimp and with some filters, and trial and error, ended up with that image. I think it’s neat, like something that would be on a record sleeve, or a 1960s movie poster. If any of you who are clever and creative want to make something with it, I’d love to see what it inspires you to create.

The Niven Jazz Collection at the Internet Archive is phenomenal, and it was my soundtrack while I worked on this thing.

Oh, I had this realization: I’m creatively starving. So I know what the source of my anxiety is, and I know why I feel unhappy and frustrated. Now I just have to figure out what the thing to do is. Part of that incessant background hum is knowing that I can do almost anything, if I just do the fucking work, so I don’t know where to start.

But I have an idea … of sorts. So that’s a start.

 

you run and you run to catch up with the sun

 

My life reboot is going well. Though I make lots of jokes about how I’ve traded everything I liked in my life for water and exercise, I really do feel good. The changes I made to my life, which I’ve committed to maintaining, are making a positive difference in every area of my existence, and I love it.

I’m having a massive existential crisis about being an actor right now, but that’s a whole thing that I’m not going to get into in public until I’ve had more time to think about it, and talk about it with my friends who are other creative people.

But other than that whole thing, I’m happy. I’m taking good care of myself physically, emotionally, and mentally.

So that’s why I’m not going to any conventions this year, except a single one in England this October. This means I won’t be at San Diego Comicon, including w00tstock, or HopCon.

There are probably less than one hundred people in the world who care about that, but if you’re one of them, read on and I’ll tell you why.

Last year I had a miserable time at Comicon. I didn’t enjoy w00tstock, and I just felt like I was “off” during HopCon. I felt massively anxious, uncomfortable in my own skin, and afraid of everything the whole time I was in San Diego. I did a good job of wearing the mask of a person, and I was pretty good as imitating the things that people do, so only the people who know me very well could tell that I didn’t want to be there.

GenCon was awful. I spent the entire convention having meetings with people, trying to repair the damage that someone I thought was my friend had done to me, Tabletop, and all the hard work I’d done for many years.

Every single time I saw that I had to travel for a convention, I spent the whole week hoping that something would happen so that I couldn’t go. Once I got there, I did my best to honor the people who waited to meet me, I did my best to perform well when I was on stage, and I had a few genuine moments of happiness, but I mostly felt tired and overwhelmed.

One of the things I haven’t talked about that is part of my life reboot is making more time for myself. It’s about setting limits, saying no to things even if I think they’ll be fun, and doing my work, instead of someone else’s work.

I realize that this is totally #FirstWorldCelebrityProblems, but I have to take this year off from personal appearances and conventions. I have to stay home and write. I have to find my way back to the art. I have to find my way back to being a creative person who makes stories and characters and creative things, instead of being a person who hosts stuff, does things which are transactional nonfiction, and spends lots of time on the road talking about those things.

The imperfect comparison I’ve been using is that I feel like I’m in a band. I worked really hard for a long, long time to record a record that people liked, and when I finally did, I went out on tour to support it … but I haven’t been able to write or record a new album. It’s like I’ve been on tour so long, I’m starting to resent playing the songs I used to love, and I am just tired and uninterested in doing the shows.

So this summer, I’m not going to be at a lot of the places the few of you who are reading this have gotten used to seeing me. I’m totally burned out, and it interacting with me at any of these things this summer wouldn’t be awesome for me or you.

If everything goes according to plan, I’ll spend the rest of this year writing stories, making podcasts, doing a few narrative fiction film projects, and maybe even somehow getting on-camera work as an actor. If everything goes according to plan, I’m going to create a lot of new stuff this year, and next year I’ll be excited to share it, perform it, and take it to some of the places I’m not going this year.

Anything to take my mind away from where it’s supposed to be.

“Hey, are you walking out?” I asked my friend.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I’ll walk out with you.”

He picked up his coat and script. I put my phone in my pocket and reached for my glasses, before I remembered that they were in my car.

We said goodbye to a pretty amazing person who I can’t name because of reasons, and headed down the hallway toward the parking lot.

When we got to the door, another person was coming in. He knew my friend, and said hello to him.

“What are you working on?” He asked my friend.

There was a long pause while my friend and I looked at each other. This project we’re on has been in production for a few months, and we record on it almost every week. He and I are regulars, and it’s fairly common for someone we both know to come in as a guest actor, surprising us both, because none of us are allowed to talk about this thing. In fact, one of my best friends worked on it a few weeks ago, and the day before I’d had a conversation like this with her:

Me: Do you want to get lunch tomorrow?

Her: I’m working until about 1pm, but I’m free after that.

Me: Oh, me too. What are you working on?

Her: I can’t say. NDA.

Me: Oh, I hear ya. I’m on something like that right now, too.

Her: Okay, I’ll text you when I’m done and we can meet up somewhere.

So after this long pause, my friend said, “It’s a super secret thing that we’re doing for [network].”

He looked at me. “Can we say [network]?”

“I’m pretty sure we can’t say that,” I said.

“You should probably forget that I said [network],” my friend said.

“Yeah, if it comes up for any reason, you definitely did not hear either of us say anything about [network], especially how we are working on a show for [network],” I added.

“I am now completely forgetting about [network],” he said.

We all looked at each other for a moment, and then we all laughed.

“This is so weird,” I said. “We’re all working on cool things, and I bet we know what they are, because we’ve either worked on them at another time, auditioned for them, or know someone who is on them … but none of us are allowed to talk about it for months or longer.”

We talked around what we’re doing a little bit, and then we all went our separate ways.

This is a cool and awesome thing that I get to do. I hear mean and dismissive things from dicks on the Internet all the time about how I don’t do anything and I’m lame and all that stuff, and for awhile, a big part of me believed it. But when I do things like this work today, and the thing I did a couple days ago, and this thing that I’m doing next week, I realize that they’re full of shit. I’m doing a lot of cool stuff, it’s just stuff that I can’t talk about.

This thing, though, in particular, is really great. I’m excited as hell to talk about it at some point in the Mysterious Future, probably after [network] announces it and then gets mad at me for announcing it myself three days later.

I’m the boss of me. (Or, how’s that reboot working out for ya?)

It’s been about seven months since I decided to hit the reboot button on my life, and it’s time to check in and see how I’m doing.

The real challenge this month, and the 54,000 dollar question is: is it worth it?

The fact that I’ve waited until the last day .. even the last half of the last day … of the month should give some indication as to where I’m at, emotionally, right now.

I mostly feel good. I’m mostly sleeping well (other than a couple of intensely terrible nightmare nights), I don’t feel like I’m missing out on any food I want, and I haven’t really missed beer that much. But I feel like the reboot curve has flattened out, and now I’m through the part where I see and experience dramatic results all the time, and I’m in the long dark teatime of the soul.

That’s, uh, that’s not where I really am. My fingers just typed that because it was amusing to me. I’m in the long and boring maintenance part of this, while I adjust to a new normal. I feel really good in my body, the exercise is actually fun, cooking healthy food is fun and delicious, and I can have ice cream almost every night, because I’m taking good care of myself in every other aspect of my life and if I want to have ice cream then goddammit I am going to.

But when someone tells me that I look really good (“ten years younger” is the most common thing, which is nice) and they want to know how I did it in such a short period of time, I tell them that I just took everything I liked and replaced it with water and exercise (which isn’t my phrase, I heard it somewhere else). It’s one of those funny-but-not-ha-ha-funny jokes that isn’t a joke. It’s true … but is it worth it?

I honestly don’t know. I know that I feel good. I know that I look better than I have in years. I know that I’m in really good health, so I don’t feel trapped in a body that’s aging and trying to prevent me from doing the things I want to do.

Strangely, that all feels external and not as important as it was four or five months ago. I don’t have creative and artistic satisfaction, and I know that that is entirely my fault, because I’m not nearly doing as much as I want to do creatively. I still feel like I’m doing other people’s work, even though a lot of that work is intensely satisfying and rewarding in every way. Maybe this only makes sense inside my brain, but I feel like writing for Tabletop and Titansgrave, and doing voice work for the projects I can’t talk about is work and I am expected to do work. Writing stories and making podcasts and putting together films and junk draws from essentially the same creative well, but … I don’t know, it tastes different. It’s more satisfying, I guess. It quenches a different type of thirst.

I’m doing that kind of work a very little bit at a time, but it really does feel like my phone and my email and my texts are constantly pulling me away from it, and the year is nearly half over, and I haven’t published a single short story.

Anyway, that’s a lot of first world problem complaining that I am reluctant to even share in public, but honestly assessing how this is all going is kind of important, so there it is. Let’s check in and see how my grades are for May.

Drink less beer.
Read more (and Reddit does not count as reading).
Write more.
Watch more movies.
Get better sleep.
Eat better food.
Exercise more.

Drink less beer: A+

It’s weird how little I miss beer and alcohol in general. Occasionally, there are days when I’m like a beer would be nice but that passes really fast, usually, and I get this immense satisfaction playing the game of “how many days in a row can I not have any alcohol?”

Read more: A+

Every day I’m reading for up to an hour, it seems. I’m tearing through books and short stories and magazines, and I’m now making an effort to get out of the science fiction I’ve been immersing myself in, and get into other types of narrative. I’m currently reading a book about a con man called “Yellow Kid” Weil. It’s an autobiography about a guy who lived in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century, told to a writer in 1948. He’s a profoundly unreliable narrator, but that’s a big part of the fun in his story. He’s telling us how much he’s conned all these people, but it feels like he’s conning the reader, which should be off-putting, but isn’t (at least to me).

Write more: C

So I wrote about 20,000 words this month. Most of it was for Tabletop, some of it was for speeches, some of it was that flash fiction I like to write on my Tumblr, and some of it was even on these short stories that I’m working on. But it wasn’t nearly enough, and I need to see myself after class to have a heart-to-heart talk about what my goals are, and if I’m really committed to doing all I’m capable of doing.

Watch more movies: A

I’m watching almost a movie a day, and I’m working my way through some great old anthology television, like One Step Beyond, Night Gallery, and The Outer Limits. I’m finding inspiration in these little stories, and planting seeds that I hope will grown into my own version of them very soon. I have this dream of shooting little stories with a three or four person crew and like two or three actors, and releasing them online, and these shows are helping me learn about that type of storytelling and pacing.

Get better sleep: A

I’m staying up way later than I would like to, but I have no reason not to, honestly. I’m going to sleep between 11:30 and 1, and sleeping for 8 to 9 hours. Mostly, the sleep I’m getting is good and restful, and that’s in large part due to my diet and exercise.

Eat better food: A

Keeping track of my macronutrients, giving myself a cheat day once a week, and cooking my own food as often as I can is making a great difference. I rarely crave garbage, and when I do, it’s like one donut or a few Red Vines. If I have vices related to food at all, it’s popcorn and ice cream.

Exercise more: B

I can do better. I’d probably give myself a low C for this month, but I will allow myself the curve. I worked very long hours nearly every day for three weeks straight, and I just didn’t have the energy or time or motivation to exercise when I wasn’t on set. But I walked almost every day, and since we finished production, I’ve run every other day, at least. My time and distance is holding at about 35 minutes for 5K, but I’m also not aggressively trying to train, yet, for the 10K and then the half marathon that I plan to do later this year. I’m also proud of myself, considering that six months ago, I couldn’t run for more than a minute at a time, and didn’t have the motivation to even try.

So let’s total this up and see how I did: 27 out of 28 points for a very solid A. I’ll take it, and I’ll feel as good as I can about it, considering how unfulfilled I feel creatively.

Are you still doing this with me? If you are, how do you feel?

 

forward, he cried

I’ve been pretty hard on myself recently, because I’m not making as many things as I want to make. Yes, I filmed a season of Tabletop, and did a bunch of voice work for various things, but I consider that professional work, which is different from personal creative stuff.

So this morning, while I was talking myself out of and into and back out of giving myself a grade for May’s Reboot status, I had this stupid idea that was amusing to me, and I made this:

The Dark Side of the Moo

I call it The Dark Side of the Moo, because I’m easily amused.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to do this, but that didn’t make it any less satisfying for me to draw and color it.