Spoiler: Wil Wheaton is a Wizard

Posted on By Wil

I am holding pink pages in my hand, reviewing them before I collate them into my script.

A magic battle ensues between Wil and Bert (fireballs, energy bolts, conjured beasts, etc.)

I look at the script again, to make sure I haven’t misread it.

Yeah, it really says fireballs, etc. Holy shit I’m a wizard. A wizard!

About two years ago, I was having breakfast with my friend, Bill. Bill co-created The Big Bang Theory, and over the last decade or so, we have become extremely close, very good friends. He is like family to me and I just love that not only did Big Bang introduce me to a whole new generation of audience, it introduced me to two of my most cherished and treasured friends, in Bill Prady and John Bowie.

Bill told me that he and Chuck Lorre were developing a Big Bang spinoff with Zak Penn, and went on to describe Stuart Fails To Save The Universe. I was in love with the entire thing from the first few minutes he talked about it, and that excitement and enthusiasm for this thing to get to the audience has never softened. For almost two years, we’d get together for some reason, and I’d excitedly listen to Bill as he told me what stories they were working on, how they had developed the arc of the season, and how it was all going with the studio and the network.

For a show that I never expected to be part of at all, I became (and remain) intensely invested in its success. I wanted five seasons, and then five more. I genuinely loved it.

Let’s fast forward to October of last year. I know the show is in production, because all of my friends are working on it. John is texting me from the set, telling me what an incredible cast it is, how much fun they are all having. I’m texting Bill to ask how it’s all going, and he couldn’t be happier.

Neither of them says anything to me about playing a wizard in a universe where magic is real, so when the email arrives asking about my availability to do a few days on the show, the excitement and surprise shake the foundation of my home. Yeah, I’m available. Even if I’m not available, I will become available.

So I go to Universal Studios for a table read, where I meet Tommy Walker (god, I love him) and get to see Melissa Rauch for the first time in years. The entire room is rocking with laughter by the time we are done. I have to wait a week to go to the set, but first I have to be fitted for my costume.

When Felicia and I wrote the Fawkes issue of The Guild, I wanted his in-game wizard robe to be really over the top, with lots of runes and Eldritch energy that he absolutely can’t control, but wears because it makes him look cool. So during my fitting, I mentioned to Val, the costume designer, that I would *love* it if we could put some runes on the robe, as a little easter egg for me and like twelve other people. She’s rad, by the way. She is so creative and clever, puts so much intention into every detail on every costume, nothing is there just because. Everything has a reason, just like it did on Big Bang Theory.

I put rings on almost all my fingers, and you know that in my imagination, each one held a different spell, a different well of magical energy, and so on. No, it doesn’t matter to the audience, but it matters to me, it’s fun.

A funny and fun thing happens when I put the robe on. Without meaning to, I stand up as straight as I can. I am tits up all the way, my shoulders feel strong and solid (they are neither), and I feel legitimately cool. As Lester Bangs says in Almost Famous, “Oh, dude, they made you feel cool, and you are not cool.”

You can see the pins and stuff on the robe in these pictures from my fitting, because I didn’t take any pictures of myself when I was on set (I made a choice to leave my phone in my dressing room, so I could be fully present on set, forgetting that it is also my camera. Oops).

Also, while I was at my fitting, Jonathan Frakes showed up! He was directing episodes after mine, and was there to prep. He found out I was going to be there, so he surprised me with a big hug and a day I didn’t think could get any better took its place in the top ten of 2025.

A few days later, I reported to set for my first day, where I proceeded to have one of the best days of my life, playing a motherfucking WIZARD.

The first thing I notice when I walk into the stage is how happy everyone is. This show shoots in Los Angeles at a time when that is not as common as we all want it to be. Everyone is thrilled to have the job, to go home after work, to be collaborating with genuinely talented professionals. (For instance, every grip on this show is a Key Grip, usually, because they were all so happy to work locally).

The cast are all my friends, all people I know, some better than others, and just like when I was on Big Bang Theory, they welcome me like I have been there all along and won’t be done in three days.

We rehearse the entire sequence, very loosely, just getting an idea where we will all be, where the camera will go, all that stuff. We don’t get into performance at all, yet. This is pretty much just blocking. I find out that I will get to stand on this lever platform thing that will lower me into the scene, as if I have come through a portal (A PORTAL) to deliver my magical justice.

So we get into it, we shoot some of it, and it’s just incredibly fun and satisfying. About three hours into the day, I realize that I, too, am just having fun. For the first time maybe ever in my life, I feel worthy and unafraid of being fired when I am on set. I make choices to see how they feel and if they work. Some do, some don’t, but Kyle Newacheck, the director, encourages me to play and find stuff, even if it means I find something that doesn’t work.

I can’t overstate how healing this is for me, at 53 years-old, to be on the set of a show that really matters to me, where I don’t want to let anyone down, and feel supported and safe. Even when I was on Big Bang Theory, and I’d been recurring for almost ten years, a very big part of me was absolutely convinced I was going to fuck up and get fired. Not because of anything anyone said or did when I was there, but because of the trauma my mom filled me with when I was a kid.

The first day, we do everything except the big battle between me and Brian, which will be first up when we come back tomorrow. For the first time ever in my entire career, I don’t want the day to end. I don’t want to race back home to my regular life. I want to stay on the set and keep playing with my friends.

So the morning comes and we are all on the set again, blocking the big fight. The set is cleared out of everyone except me, Brian, Kyle, the cameraman and the visual effects team. Kyle asks Brian and me if we had any ideas, before he tells us what he’s thinking. I can’t overstate how rare this is, a director asking actors what they are thinking, before he even mentions what he is thinking. It opens the door to collaboration, gives us permission to take some chances, and relaxes me so much, I let go of tension I didn’t realize I was holding.

I have spent more time than is probably necessary, practicing my spellcasting at home in the mirror. I have very clear ideas about how Wil Wheaton from the Wizard’s Guild of America casts spells, how I grab the magical energy from the aether and shape it into fire, stuff like that.

Brian has ideas, too, and Kyle takes his and mine and adds them into what he was already thinking. We develop this beautiful choreography, and Brian makes this choice right away to be kind of stiff and unfamiliar with his magic, to help sell how fluid and experienced I am with mine. It’s another moment where a scene partner makes me look so much cooler than I am, just like Jim always selling how much you loved to hate Evil Wil Wheaton back in the day.

We are moving through it slowly, starting and stopping so VFX can see where to put practical explosions on the set, when I get an idea.

“Hey, Kyle,” I say, “can I pitch two things?”

“Sure,” he says.

“Okay. What if I deflected one of his attacks like this,” I make a Vulcan salute and thrust my hand forward, putting all my body’s energy and intention behind it.

“Oh yeah! And I can throw it like this!” Posehn makes the Dio Rock Goat and aims the horns at me.

“Holy shit that’s so cool,” I say.

“I love that!” Kyle says.

“And what if I pulled my octopus tattoo off my arm, and threw it at him?” I say, casually spending a few hundred thousand dollars on the resulting visual effects shots. Kyle’s eyes light up. Brian’s eyes light up. Suddenly, I am surrounded by several pairs of lit up eyes.

Kyle turns to one of the producers. I can’t recall who it was, due to the fog of excitement, but they pow wow for a second. I can see that they are getting excited about it. He turns back to me. “Do you own it?”

“I do.” This has come up before, so I am prepared with releases and permissions.

“Great. Let’s do it.”

Holy shit it’s going to happen!

Bill will later tell me that refining the shot becomes more complicated and technically fraught than they ever expected, and it’s entirely worth it.

We spend a few hours filming our battle. It’s a mixture of visual and practical effects, and I feel so cool the entire time. It’s just so many things I love all coming together at once, a gift I will cherish forever.

When we wrap, I get this lovely round of applause from the cast and crew. In that moment, I make a wish for the show to get picked up, so I can come back next season in a different universe, and play with my friends again. I walk back to my dressing room, wearing the absolute shit out of my robe one last time.

Felicia and I talked about this in even more detail on the podcast, which you can find in all the podcast places, if you’d like to hear more.

I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for reading. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to your inbox, here’s the thing:

i can finally talk about something i worked on!

Posted on By Wil

It feels like it was about 18 months ago, but could be as long as three years ago, that my friend told me about a TV show he was developing. It was a brilliant idea, I thought. A science fiction action comedy? YES PLEASE. It was funny, and clever, and entirely original, which was wild, considering it was a spin-off.

The show did get the green light, and it premieres July 23. If you have not figured this out, yet, the show is Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. My friend is Bill Prady, who also co-created The Big Bang Theory.

AND AND AND … I am co-hosting the companion podcast with Felicia Day! The trailed for our thing dropped a few hours ago.

Felicia and I will interview a ton of our real life friends from the cast1, and some genuinely amazing department heads. We get into some of the deep nerd shit in each episode (that’s kinda my thing), and just have all kinds of fun working together. Okay, that’s probably more than I can tell you without getting a stern look from a twentysomething who I technically report to. I may be getting at least a sideways glance, as it is.

I have so many things I want to say about the series, which I loved from start to finish, but I’ll get so much worse than a stern look if I even think about that, so allow me to merely say that I endorse it and hope you trust me.

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is on HBO Max. We are also on HBO Max, the HBO Max YouTube channel, and wherever you get your podcasts. And, hey, while you’re looking for podcasts, maybe check out It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton.

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to your inbox, here’s the thingy:

  1. You will hear me, more than once, excitedly celebrate the feeling that someone from the neighborhood made it big in Hollywood. It’s not a bit; I’m genuinely thrilled for my friends. ↩︎

blog

can i tell you a story?

Posted on By Wil

Earlier today, a really fun memory surfaced that I wanted to share, because I haven’t had an opportunity to tell a story in a little while. It’s an older memory, so I’m sure some of the specifics aren’t entirely correct, but this is way I remember it.

In the early 2000s, I worked on a couple of movies that were direct-to-DVD, low budget versions of successful, big budget movies of the moment. Call it the Roger Corman model.

In the first one I did, Deep Core, the whole Earth is going to explode or something, unless an unlikely band of misfits can drill to the Deep Core of the planet and set off the bomb or whatever. It’s sort of like Armageddon but underground, and also like The Core, but for about sixteen dollars and some wire from the bin behind the hardware store.

Now, having said that, it’s a charming and silly and extremely fun movie where my character eventually turns into a flaming skeleton with the help of an unexpected gout of magma in the third act. It understands the assignment, because we all understood the assignment. It was a fun set, where we got to just play our scenes to the best of our ability.

And I got to work with some lovely castmates. The unlikely band of misfits, collected from an oil field of questionable legality, were played by me, Craig Scheffer, Bruce McGill, and Terry Farrell.

At some point in the story, the four of us are in this drilling machine thing that looks suspiciously like a shuttlecraft from a popular 1990s science fiction program. It’s a practical set that comes apart in the middle, longways, and is set atop a system of boards and other boards that create a poor man’s gimbal to simulate the exciting motion while we are flying through space drilling toward the Deep Core. It was cool, especially for a low budget set. You could only see some of the nails, and the parts that weren’t supposed to wobble mostly didn’t. I recall the console having lots of practical toggles and buttons, which is always a lot of fun.

We filmed in this thing for about a week. On the first day, during our first rehearsal, those extremely safe and union-approved levers were tested out while we all sat in our places. Terry and Craig were in the driver’s seats, Bruce and I faced away from each other down the sides of the thing, behind them. I liked to imagine I was the Spock of this crew.

So the director gets us all together on the first day. We talk about the whole “drilling Deep into the Core ” of it all. He says, “So this isn’t a smooth ride, as you drill through the rocks. We’re going to move the set a little bit, but you’ll need to sell it with your own motion.”

Craig asks what that motion should look like and the director says it’s sort of like being in a tank over a dirt road.

At this point, I look at Terry over my shoulder, and find that she is already looking at me.

“So you think this is about a 3?” She says.

“Yeah, that seems about right,” I agree, and we both turn back to take our positions for rehearsal.

This is when Craig holds up a hand and says, “Hold on. What was that? You two just communicated something to each other, using words I understand, and I have no idea what you said.”

Terry and I burst out laughing.

“It’s the Star Trek shake scale,” I tell him. “When there are nine actors in a scene and we get hit by a photon torpedo, we all need to react with the same intensity, so we have the scale.”

“We weren’t even on the same show, and we both use the scale,” Terry added.

“Yeah, it’s standardized across all series,” I said. “First week at the Academy stuff.”

This makes Terry and me laugh, all over again.

“So are you guys going to teach us?” Bruce asks, his voice bright with amusement.

Terry and I look at each other and play out the bit just a little longer. “Sure,” I say, “a 3 looks like this.” I nod at Terry and we both start doing an identical level of shimmy and shake. “This is a 6,” she says, and we both flop over our consoles before we right ourselves.

“Damage report!” I say. As I remember this moment, even though my memories are a quarter century old and I’ve certainly gotten some of the specifics wrong, I can so clearly see and feel how much fun we had while we were doing this. When I talk about how Star Trek is a family that you never leave unless you want to, this is what I am talking about. Moments like this that only a few hundred people, in the history of the world, have experienced in this specific way. It’s such a blessing, such a gift.

At this point, the director and the whole crew are watching us. The director asks us for a 1, and we do it. Bruce asks for a 5, and we shake side to side before we steady ourselves on our consoles. Someone asks for a 10, and in the literal blink of an eye, we silently agree we are not doing that. They can’t handle a 10. They think they can, but they have no idea.

“Sorry, that only happens when we crash the Enterprise,” I say.

Everyone laughs, and the first AD asserts that we have to get to work, guys. The director gets ready to call action on rehearsal.

“Okay, everyone,” he pauses for a moment, then continues with purpose, “this is a 3,” he says. “And, action!”

I glance over my shoulder and see Craig is doing about a 2, but he’s getting there. Bruce is a solid 3, cheating a little bit with a sideways glace toward Terry, who makes it look easy.

I suppress a grin and gently rock side to side, as I match their tempo, a perfect 3.

Some fun stuff I came across while (unsuccessfully) looking for a place you can stream this, from Wikipedia.

From the “Reception” section: IMDb gave the film a 2.6 out of 10, AllMovie gave the film a 1.5 out of 5, Contact Music gave the film a 1 out of 5, TV Guide gave the film a 2 out of 5 Disaster Movie World gave the film a 1 out of 5.

That is entirely fair, generous, even.

From the “See Also” section: The Core, 2003 film with a similar plot.

This is the funniest thing in this post, and I didn’t even write it. Well played, Wikipedia.

I’m glad you’re here. If this is your first time, or your first time in awhile, you are invited to listen to It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton. Tell your friends! If you’d like to get these blog posts delivered to your inbox, here’s the thing:

on saturday. on purpose.

Posted on By Wil

“Still punk as fuck,” I whisper to myself, as I slide new Orthotic insoles into my Converse. As long as I’m down there, I get them on my feet and tie them. I use this double loop thing my kid taught me when he was in middle school. I’m sure there’s an easier way to keep my shoes tied, but this way has never failed me. And it keeps me connected to my kid, every day.

I exhaled, and stood up with a sort of braying grunt that I have taken to calling My Old1.

“Still punk as fuck.”

Shoes on, laces tied, standing at my full height, I head out to take a walk. When I’m up around the corner and about halfway down the block, I realize that I can really — I mean really — feel everything under my feet. Almost immediately, I can feel a familiar discomfort in my left calf and then my right hip. For the rest of my abruptly abbreviated walk, I think about something on the Orthotic insole package about how the fancy Orthotic inserts can only do so much, so take good care of your shoes like a good consumer.

I’m sorry. I struggle to take care of myself, and you want me to take care of my shoes? How about you bring me a Pepsi instead?“

I scowl a lot more than I usually do, as a limp home.

“That was fast,” Anne says when I come into the house.

I tell her about how I hurt my Old2, and how I have been forced to accept that it’s time to buy new shoes. After I work out the cramp with my good friends the foam roller and the lacrosse ball, I spend the next quarter of an hour looking for the least worst way to get some new shoes. After a number of false starts online and a refusal to order from Amazon if there is any alternative, I conclude that the least worst way is to go to the mall. On Saturday. On purpose.

I ask Anne. “Hey, want to go to the mall?”

“On Saturday? On purpose?”

“It’s the least worst way for me to get new shoes.”

“But the mall? On Saturday? On purpose? You need new shoes that urgently?”

I fold my arms.”You ask a lotta questions. What are you, a cop? You have to tell me if you’re a cop.”

She smirks. “Okay. Come with me when I run some errands and we can go to the mall on the way home.”

“Awesome.”

Montage!

  • The beauty supply.
  • A red light.
  • The bank.
  • A red light.
  • A busy street.
  • A quiet, tree-lined street.
  • Some asshole who makes us miss the goddamn left turn signal because they’re looking at their fucking phone.
  • Another quiet street, bucolic beneath a canopy of sycamores. Kids do hopscotch on the sidewalk.
  • The store.
  • Me, carrying an hilarious amount of toilet paper to the car.
  • Me, struggling to fit the hilarious amount of toiler paper into the car, giggling like an idiot.
  • Blowing through a yellow light, we both do a mouth horn version of the General Lee’s horn.3
  • The post office.
  • The mall.

“I think I’m going to wait in the car while you go get your shoes,” Anne says in the tired voice we’ve both been using more often than not, lately.

“Yeah, that was a hell of a montage.”

“Seriously. Get off your goddamn phone, dude.”

“That’s what I’m saying. I’ll be right back. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

I walk down the ramp, past the future pop-up Backrooms installation that was Sears for as long as I could remember, until it wasn’t, and finally into the mall.

I’m striding down an empty corridor and past the bathrooms, toward the main shopping spur, next to Macy’s. When was I last here? I try to do the math, but I’ve never been good at doing the math. I settle on: I haven’t been here in a long time. I’m not even sure I’ve been here this year. There’s been no reason to come here.

But back in the 20th century, this place was real close to a second home for me and a lot of my friends. We saw movies here, we had Mongolian Barbecue here, we spent hours in the quiet safety of the bookstore. I bought my first dishwasher at the Sears.

Sometime in the last two decades, the Burbank Town Center began its audition for a small but impactful role in the touring company of Abandoned Malls of America. It nearly succeeded. During the callbacks and producer sessions, it was home to two different Halloween stores. In a moment of desperation during early eliminations, it added a caviar vending machine on the second floor, suspiciously close to the Victoria’s Secret, around Valentine’s Day. The lower level spent several years as a race track for those weird fur-covered animal driving things. Remember them? They’re still around, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m about halfway down the corridor when I notice the faint white noise of … it can’t be. No. This mall is dead.

…Isn’t it?

It is not. I know, before I turn the corner, that this mall is full of people. And holy shit is it full of people. Rumors of this mall’s death have been greatly exaggerated. No wonder it didn’t make the tour. I pat my pockets for my phone, so I can share this unexpected news with Anne. I find out that I left my phone in the car. Aw, shit.

No! Wait! Hey, cool. I left my phone in the car, so now I can be, like, fully present here and take in all of this … life and business and activity and … mall-y goodness. Maybe I’ll write about it in my blog, like I did in the Before Times. When it felt like it mattered.

So I look around me and, yeah, there aren’t nearly as many stores as there used to be, but the stores I see are legit. They are not the Teemu version of a Wish.com version of a stall at an indoor swap meet, like last time I was here. I see lots of stores I recognize, and just tons of people.

“Hey! Hey! Mister! Hey! DUDE!”

I look back toward the source of this tiny voice, and see that I am between a kid who is riding one of those fur-covered animal driving things and his destination. I briefly wonder why he doesn’t just go around me, but there are so many shoppers, he can’t.

“Sorry, buddy,” I step back and feel bad for this kid, who was probably looking forward to a breakneck, 5 mile-per-hour tear around the mall, but has instead found himself in stop-and-go human-to-fur-covered-animal-driving-thing traffic. He creeps past me and I suppress a laugh when he gives me the stinkeye. I think but do not say, “Someday you’ll outgrow it, kid! Someday you’ll want to drive your fur-covered animal driving thing, and the teenager at the kiosk will tell you that you’re too tall. Or too old. Or maybe they got a crisp fiver from an old man with a grudge you foolishly gave the stinkeye in ought ’26. I don’t know what or when it will be, kid, but it’s coming for you. It comes for us all.”

There are two stores in the mall that might have the shoes I’m looking for. Against everything I believe in, I look at the mall directory to find out where they are located. I could do it my way, but Anne’s waiting for me and she doesn’t deserve that.

Through the food court, inhaling the melange of fryer oil, spices, frozen mysteries. The flip book of memories: frozen yogurt and hot dog on a stick and lemonade and so many bad choices. That glorious time when bad choices didn’t matter, time that ended as abruptly and unexpectedly as the last time you got to drive the fur-covered animal driving thing.

Up the escalator and past the movie theater.4 Past a trading card shop, the Bath and Body Works that must be whatever the retail incarnation of a lich is at this point, and into shoe store number one.

There is a person at the register, having an issue with the payment thing. I pick a spot at a distance that is respectful of their space while unmistakably saying I’m in line so don’t even motherfucker because I will cut you.

I don’t have my phone, and I love that. I love that I am deliberately and enthusiastically gulping and devouring every detail I possibly can, choosing to be present in that moment, in that place. I look around so I can paint the picture later (which is now) in a series of observations:

There are a lot of socks that you buy one or two pair at a time. I don’t see any whimsical nylon socks with dinosaurs and puns, but it looks like tubesocks with rings are making a comeback.

Checkered Vans never go out of style, and that gives me comfort.

I will never understand Crocs. I will never understand spending real money to carry a backpack that looks like a novelty-sized Croc, thus announcing to the world HEY EVERYONE I LOVE CROCS.

I look at the Doc Martens and cry out internally for the two dozen pair of vintage leather Docs I gave away twenty years ago. I hope, as I always do when encountering this painful memory, that they went to a good home. I like to imagine a baby punk grabbing them for ten bucks at a thrift shop, and not a bougie trust fund poser paying 500 for them at Buffalo Exchange.

The girl ahead of me completes her transaction and walks past me. I’m too lost in thought about my old Docs to capture a single detail of her existence. This will be weird to me when I write it down, later.

“Can I help you?” The woman at the registeris giving the quiet competence and existential exhaustion of Manager of this store in this mall in this year of 2026.

“Yeah, I’m looking for black Converse low tops, men’s size 10. Please.”

“Let me look.”

“Thank you.”

She taps a few keys, frowns. Taps a few more. I notice that the store soundtrack has begun playing Back to Life.

“Wow, I don’t think I’ve heard this since the 90s,” I say.

She does not look up. “I think this was the 80s.”

“Yeah, 1988, right?” I say5.

“Mmm-hmmmm.”

Before I can stop it, something taps the well of sadness I carry around these days. I mutter, “1988. That was such a good year. Damn. I am very old.”

At this, she looks up at me. For just a second, we stand there and look at each other in Generation X.

“I feel you,” she says. She goes back to the computer. “Yes. Let me get them for you.” She walks into the back.

I think about the mall. There’s a feeling that I only get in a mall that I can’t quantify or describe but I know that other Olds will understand what “being in the mall” feels like. The smells and sounds of the water features and indoor plants. This is a time that is never coming back, even if every mall suddenly burst back into life. Because it’s not the stores or the band performances in the center court or the celebrity appearing this afternoon at J.C. Penny’s from 2-4pm. It’s about that moment in time when we were young and this place allowed us to be who we were, while we were all figuring out what that meant. It was a place to try out our ideas of being an adult, a place to be free of our parents and teachers, where we really were allowed to run free. I enjoy telling jokes about getting older, but to be totally honest, I really do think it’s great. I love my life and the people in it, even though it is all happening in this chamber of horrors none of us can escape. I’ve worked hard to earn this, and I’m working even harder to protect it. I guess, in a metaphorical way, this mall experience reflects some of that.

While all of this runs through my head, simultaneously nostalgic and solastalgic, I bop my head and quietly sing along. “however do you want me …. however do you need me…”

A pair of kids walk into the store and I try to become invisible.

Before I can find out if I am successful or not, she comes back with my shoes and I pay with my watch on the first try, for the first time ever6. I walk back through the mall and exit through Macy’s. I’m pretty sure at least some of the perfume and cologne cloud I swam through is still in my hair and my raccoon wounds.

Down the stairs and across the aisle, up the ramp … shit. I need to go down one level.

Down the ramp to the other stairs, down those stairs, wait for the Prius to back out hello, sir, I am a pedestrian standing right here and I thought you had a backup camera no worries let me step out of your way. Wouldn’t it be an hilarious callback if the kid from the fur-covered animal driving thing was in a car seat in the back, and I gave him the stinkeye this time? It wasn’t, but we could pretend it happened if we wanted to inject a little more humor and maybe pay off what seemed like maybe an unimportant encounter earlier in our story.

I hop into the car.

“Hey! You got your shoes?”

I hold up my bag. “Yep. Guess who paid with his watch on the first try, for the first time ever?”

She starts the car and puts it in reverse. “The guy ahead of you?”

“Ha. Actually, it was a girl and — AND — she was probably in her 30s (or maybe a teenager I don’t know everyone under 40 looks like they are a baby to me and why would I even ask in the first place like a creep) and she couldn’t get it to work at all. So.”

“Wow.”

“I know, right?”

I take my phone out of the cup holder where I left it. I turn it over and look at the Misfits sticker on the back, then flip it around and catch my reflection in the unlit screen. I hold that for a second, then put it into my pocket without waking it up.

“And I think … I think I may have found something to write. It isn’t really about anything, I don’t think, so it can’t be a story, but it can probably be a blog post.”

She turns on her left signal and pulls out of the garage. “Hey, that’s awesome!”

“Yeah,” I say, “It isn’t anything important, but I think it will be fun to write, and I think that’s a kind of self-care.”

“I’m really happy for you,” she says.

“Yeah. I’m happy for me, too.”

A postscript for the reader: I did have a lot of fun writing this. And it was self-care. I split it up over a couple of days, when I wasn’t working. I’m glad I made the time to do it. I’m glad I remembered, “write it badly or it won’t be written”, so I would keep going. Not that it’s bad writing (maybe it is, I don’t know), but I gave myself permission to write badly (in this case, not clearly about one thing, at least not on purpose), so that I could write, well, something.

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  1. Not to be confused with my Old, as in “ow, I hurt my Old”. ↩︎
  2. See? Different, but still applicable. ↩︎
  3. Yes, fuck the Confederacy-normalizing Dukes of Hazzard. Fuck it all forever. It is deeply problematic. It’s also a huge part of my childhood that I’m not willing to Eternal Sunshine out of my memories. ↩︎
  4. I’m still pretty sure my TV is bigger than their average screen, and I’m not saying that to brag about my TV. ↩︎
  5. Like, I know that it was released in 1988 but what I meant was, I’m pretty sure the last time I heard it was in the 90s but she doesn’t care and I can just be quiet. ↩︎
  6. I never feel as stupid, incompetent, and Old Man Wheaton as I do when I try to use my watch or my phone to pay for things. I swear to god, every point of sale is different, on purpose, to make me — yes, me specifically — feel dumb. ↩︎

kerosene keeps me warm

Posted on By Wil

A couple weeks ago, I got fed up with my body feeling sore all the time because I’m not taking better care of it.

I mean, I eat well, I haven’t touched alcohol in almost 11 years, and I take pretty decent walks every day. But my muscle mass still hasn’t recovered from the seizure I had a couple years ago, no matter how regularly I lift weights and do moderate exercise. It’s demoralizing for me, as someone who was relentlessly bullied by my father for being skinny, picked on my kids at school for being uncoordinated, who always felt like he wasn’t enough.

If anyone is wondering how badly mistreating a child affects them, wondering how long the pain and the fear and the confusion and the sadness lasts, how it all persists regardless of how much success you have in your life, I’m almost 54. So.

Anyway. I woke up about two weeks ago, and everything hurt: my hips, my shoulders, the spot in my upper back where one of my vertebrae rotated during my seizure and stayed that way for five months. And just to spice things up, a raging headache.

I was, like, “hey, good thing I quit drinking so I never woke up feeling hungover again.”

I’m big on gallows humor.

When I get that physical pain, which isn’t clinically chronic pain, but is practically the same for me, it’s depressing. It’s infuriating. It makes me want to scream. I’m impatient, I’m irritable, and I do not like the person I am.

I dragged myself out of bed, counted that as a victory, and started my day. Coffee, granola, another coffee, my fiber because I’m punk as fuck, a long and considered moment in front of the Chemex as I talk myself out of the third coffee I know will be Officially Too Much Coffee For Wil.

While I was not having too much coffee (water, instead, because I’m a goddamn adult), I began looking at couch to 5K plans. I last did that in 2017 (my best time was 29:59) and I loved it. It really helped when I was living my life as a sober person for the first time, losing the bloat and unhealthy bleh that years of abuse had inflicted upon my body. It was pretty great, watching my body shed not just pounds but a lot of trauma and self-harm as I got stronger and felt more and more like I wasn’t a worthless piece of shit (I was never a worthless piece of shit, to be clear; Depression Lies and trauma is a bitch). When I finally did my race, and I pushed myself like hell for the last few hundred meters to get under 30 minutes, I felt like a warrior. Like, Worf would have been so massively proud of me.

I felt so good, so solid and present in my life, that it was absolutely devastating when I hurt myself one day (hurt my Old, if I’m being technical about it) while I was out, and had to limp home. It was, like, step, step, step, PAIN. My calf cramped up, and before I knew it, it ran up my hamstring and down into the bottom of my foot. I still don’t know how it happened, but I can remember what happened next. This was a over a year before I did weekly EMDR and CPTSD recovery work, so I had not yet handled my lingering anger … and I was fucking enraged. I was so furious that this thing I love, this thing that was helping me reclaim my body and my spirit from literal decades of pain and abuse and motherfucking functional alcoholism was stolen from me, literally yanked out from underneath my feet, while I was in the middle doing it. I didn’t do anything wrong, I thought, and I still got hurt. Jesus fuck, could that be more on the nose?

The incandescent anger I felt, the sense of being betrayed by my own body, the futility of doing anything because some fucking bullshit always fucks it up anyway and it’s never going to get any better … that was a lot.

But I didn’t give up right away. I did my best to work out the injury with massage and other forms of exercise. I just couldn’t get whatever I had injured to tell me what it needed, and neither could the doctors I saw about it. Eventually, I just resigned myself to never running again.

Then my friend, Jenna, who is just two years younger than me, started running marathons. I have lost count but I think it’s got to be close to 50 now? At first, I was envious, then I was inspired, but I was always afraid to take the risk and start again. Sure, it had been a couple years since I hurt myself, and I had done a massive amount of recovery and healing work. I worked on how angry I felt when I confronted my trauma, until I didn’t feel angry anymore. I reparented myself, and lived every day making a conscious effort to be the adult I always needed.

Yadda yadda yadda I got better. I am better. I still have bad days (this year has been so hard, with so much loss and grief), and I get through them. I have good days, even great days, and I don’t take them for granted.

So when I woke up a couple weeks ago and my everything hurt, and I went through my morning routine, I made a promise to myself to get serious about regular, moderate exercise. The big hurdle for me was feeling like I am worth it. After all these years, after all the therapy and all the work, I still struggle to put myself first, to take really good care of myself because there are people who love me who will be really sad if I don’t. (I’m working on being one of those people, but it’s still a struggle more often than it should be.)

I looked at half a dozen plans, and saw the things they all had in common. I deliberately chose the easiest, slowest, you-haven’t-done-shit-in-years plan, set the intervals in my watch, walked out the door, and got started.

My first week of training was so fun! I started out doing 30 seconds of jogging and a minute of walking, for 20 minutes. The first day was easy and fun. The second day, the first half block felt like I was running through molasses before I broke free and settled in. I discovered that Keep Me Fed, by The Warning, was a fantastic companion album for my session. The rest of the week was an absolute joy. I felt accomplished and excited.

I was out for my first run in week two, doing 60 seconds of jogging and 90 walking, almost finished with my penultimate interval. I turned down my street. Step, step, step, PAIN. The exact same thing that happened before.

Are you fucking kidding me? What the actual fuck, Wil’s Body?

I stopped. I breathed. I grabbed a nearby pole and gently stretched my calves and hamstrings. I massaged my leg. Nothing worked. I limped home.

I was so incredibly disappointed, so bummed out, but I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t enraged. I wasn’t mad at myself or the incredible unfairness of this bullshit, all over again. I just limped home, took off my shoes, used the foam roller, and then I sat down and cried.

I cried because I miss Marlowe.

I cried because my body hurt.

I cried because it’s so unfair to do everything right and still my dad doesn’t love me.

I cried because I’m just so totally exhausted by the cruelty and the violence that could have been avoided.

I just cried and cried, as all this grief poured out of me.

None of it made my leg get better, but it was cathartic. And I was grateful for it, because choosing to experience grief instead of avoiding it with anger was a big time goal, something I worked really hard to accomplish.

When I was done, my body still hurt, but my emotional self felt okay. Sure, I was disappointed, but I didn’t get mad about something that wasn’t going to change because I was mad. I spared myself from that experience, and I’m proud of myself for doing it.

I accepted that I wasn’t going to be able to run for at least a week. I took long walks instead, occasionally stopping to do some squats for strength and mobility. I did gentle exercises inside at home, not because I wanted to experience a change in my appearance, but because I felt better, emotionally as well as physically, when I was done. I invested maybe half an hour a day, and it paid off at like 5:1.

Today, I woke up (saw, again, that it still hasn’t happened), ate my breakfast, and asked my body how it was doing. Every department checked in with a green flag, except for my injured leg, which was like “I’m about 96% there, I think.” So I decided to attempt a very gentle rehab walk/jog, just once around the block.

I started Recipe For Hate, walked to warm up, and then did little intervals — very gently — around the block. One lap in, it was a little achy, but didn’t feel like it was going to cramp up again. So I went for another lap, then another, then another. I ended up doing about 20 minutes, just jogging and walking when it felt right.

And when I got home, I felt like a champion. I felt like I’d done something good for my body that I have to live in, and for the me that lives in it.

I have to go back to the beginning, I think, but that’s fine. I don’t have a race on my calendar, and this isn’t a contest or anything. It’s something more special and meaningful to me than that, and I’m really proud of myself for having the ability to understand and embrace that.

I’m worth it. You’re worth it. Whatever your Couch to 5K is, I know you can do it. I believe in me, and I believe in you.

Thanks for stopping by.

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