I turn 31 in four days.
The difference between the approach to the 31st birthday and the 30th birthday is profound.
Last year, I viewed my birthday as a deadline. This year, it feels more like a cool milestone.
I remember when I was freaking out about hitting my 30s. I talked with one of my friends who was in her late 30s, and she told me, “Don’t obsess about this too much, Wil. Your 30s are so much better than your 20s. Your 20s are spent gathering information about your world and yourself, and your 30s are spent enjoying the benefits of that information.”
She was totally right. So far, my 30s have been amazing. Here’s a list of seven things I’m grateful for — things I’ve accomplished in my 30s:

1. I accepted that I’ll never be bigger than Star Trek or Stand By Me, and discovered that that’s not a bad thing at all.
2. I had two submissions accepted at slashdot.
3. Anne and I walked in the Avon 3*Day. You guys who read my site contributed over 17,000 dollars to our cause. I am confident that we’ve made a difference in the lives of people we’ll never meet.
4. I crossed several things off my wishlist: I published a book, I recorded a voice in a video game, and I was interviewed for the Onion A / V club.
5. I finally learned how to put top spin on a ping pong ball. Look out, Winona. i will pwn joo.
6. I achieved escape velocity from TVSWILWHEATON(I hate that guy).
7. I took charge of my life.

Most of my friends are between 27 and 34, and we’re all happy and successful in various ways. The one thing we have in common is that we’ve all made our own success. None of us has climbed a corporate ladder, or played a Hollywood Game to get where we are.
And we’re all happy.
So if anyone reading this is nearing 30, and freaking out like I was, allow me to impart something I’ve learned in the last year: it’s not bad at all. So quit worrying, and enjoy the ride.
And don’t forget to mark your very first, “Those damn kids today” moment. You’ll want to remember that.
Before I go, I want to apologize to anyone who was offended by my entry yesterday. You should only suck it if you’re into sucking it. Everyone else, though, should certainly suck it, because suck it is the catchphrase that’s sweeping the nation. It’s what all the cool kids are doing these days.

People ask me all the time if I’ll link their site, or if I’ll link a site they think is cool, or something like that.
Some other people occasionally send me 10 bucks or so to offset the costs of keeping the website up and running.
So I figured, why not marry the two?
Texads are now available on WWdN. I get about 500,000 unique visitors a month, and this test ad I’ve been running has done almost 900 pageviews in less than 45 minutes.
So it’s just 10 bucks / 2500 impressions. If you’re interested, click here and set your phasers to buy.
Heh. I like talking about setting phasers to do things. I once said to a waiter, “Set your phasers to ‘refill!'”
He looked at me like I was crazy.
Speaking of crazy people, when I was in San Diego, the majority of people in our hotel on Thursday night were ultra-fundie xtian people, with their judgmental t-shirts and big ass crosses on chains.
Anne and I got into the elevator (I started to type ‘enterprise. wtf is that about?). A girl rushed into the elevator, and I said, “where are you going,” as I pushed the button for the 6th floor.
“Six,” she said.
“Oh! Six!” I said, “That’s the floor that’s sweeping the nation!”
“Damn, Wheaton, you are a funny motherfucker,” I thought.
She put her hand on her hip, and proudly displayed her “Not perfect, just saved” T-shirt, and said, “Exactly what is that supposed to mean?!”
“Uhh . . . it means that it’s where all the cool kids are staying?” I said.
“Oh. Okay,” she said.
Anne and I shared an unspoken “WTF?!” as the elevator stopped on our floor.
I’m not perfect or saved, baby. So suck it.

Today is a very bad day.
I have discovered that I screwed up lots of Dancing Barefoot orders that were placed on the onthe 27th and 28th of May. I hope it’s as few at 10 or 20, but it could be as many as 50. It’s totally my fault: I wasn’t prepared for the enormous volume of orders, and I made a really stupid rookie error in the printing of orders, and the recording of which orders had been printed, and which were not. Also, those days right before the cruise are a complete blur, which doesn’t help.
If you placed an order for the book during those twodays, and you haven’t gotten it yet, please send your PayPal receipt to me. I know that this is totally lame, and I’m sort of opening myself to ridicule here, but I have no inventory tracking system of any kind, because I never thought I’d sell more than a couple hundred books. I’m working on a database now, though, entering 2,000 orders by hand. It’s going to take awhile.
I’ve also gotten a couple of books back, which the USPS delivered to the “return” address, rather than the “to” address, and I’ve been sent back some that various post offices have “eaten.”
Overall, we’re doing good. I mean, other than my gigantic screw up, the USPS has only hosed 10 or so orders.
UPDATE: I think I’ve tracked down the source of my colossal screw up, and I think I have it under control now. It looks like I somehow missed all the orders placed on the 27th and 28th. So I am reprinting them all, and sending them all out First Class Mail tomorrow. It’s about . . . oh my sweet christ. It’s about 100 books.
I’m going to go tighten my hairshirt some more. I feel terrible about this. 🙁

WWdN reader John sent me this e-mail:

Hi,
I just realized today that you’re mentioned in the infamous Andy Warhol
Diaries. Unfortunately not by name, but it’s definitely you he’s talking
about, so I thought I’d send the quote along just in case you haven’t
seen it before.
“Wednesday, August 13, 1986
Went to see Stand by Me at the Coronet or Baronet. These four little kids and there’s the Fat kid, and the Brilliant kid and the Crazy kid. The only disappointing thing was that the kid who’s a writer they show writing about it later in life, and this really cute little kid has turned into Richard Dreyfuss! It should’ve been Richard Gere. Then I would’ve been happy.”
I’m a huge Warhol fan, so I thought it was pretty funny to stumble onto this little surprise. Hopefully, you’ll also think it’s cool.

Uh, yeah. I think this is just a little bit cool.
/understatement
🙂

My good friend J. Keith vanStraaten won’t be able to come to my birthday party, because he’s in New York working on a cool job he just booked.
He’s also got a GREAT story in Salon that you all should read.
And when you’re done with that, get even more interview madness by reading my interview with Film Threat.