About three months ago, we discovered toxic black mold underneath our kitchen sink. Two weeks after that, Anne and I packed up some bags and moved ourselves and our dogs out of our house, while a team of hazardous materials removal dudes tore apart our kitchen and made our house look like Breaking Bad.
A month after we moved out, we were able to come back into our house, because the mold (which originally appeared to be a few square feet, and ended up being much, much worse) had been successfully removed. The only problem with getting back into our house was our kitchen remained (and remains) torn up. Our refrigerator is in the middle of our living room. Our dishwasher is on our patio. We have no sink, so there’s no running water, so we can’t cook.
It’s all a real pain in the ass, and it’s made this entire summer feel like something we are enduring, rather than living.
But.
It’s important to me that I keep and maintain perspective. Starting at the very beginning of this, with the toxic black mold: nobody got sick, and we discovered it just before it spread into the walls in a way that would force us to literally tear our house down.
Insurance denied our claim for reasons that I think are bullshit. We tried and failed to fight their denial, and while it’s infuriating that they got away with it, we’re very grateful and very lucky that the whole thing didn’t cost as much as we feared, and we’re grateful and lucky that we can afford to pay for it out of pocket.
We had to be out of our house for over a month, but our friends let us stay in their home (they were out of the country), so we didn’t have to endure the cost and weirdness of living in a hotel for thirty days. We got to take our dogs with us, and we were in such a quiet and unfamiliar location, it gave me the solitude I needed to focus and finish the manuscript of the novel I was writing.
Did I bury the lede on that? My novel is currently with my editor, and even though I still need to do some work on it, it’s that much closer to being finished and published. That’s kind of a big deal for me.
Our same friends offered us their house in Hana if we wanted to get out of town for a little bit, and Anne used points and miles to get us an unexpected vacation in Hawaii for less than the cost of a single plane ticket. I’m grateful for that.
After we got back from Hana, we were able to move back into our house, even though the kitchen was (and is) all torn apart. We’ve had to eat out for every meal, which has not been awesome, but I’m grateful that we can afford that, and that we live in a place that has lots of healthy and affordable options to feed ourselves. I’ve been joking that we’re sort of like college students who eat out of take away containers, but with a fancy budget.
When we got back into our house about a month ago, we expected to live in the chaos for about five days, before everything was finished and restored to the way it was before … but everything takes longer than expected, and as of this morning, my refrigerator is still in the middle of my living room.
But.
I’m grateful that this summer has been, in perspective, a series of mild inconveniences that haven’t wrecked our lives. I’m grateful that Anne found someone who could replace our hardwood floor with an exact match, even though the boards in our house haven’t been made since the 1940s. I’m grateful that they matched the floors perfectly. I’m grateful that they were able to rebuild our cabinets and save our countertops so perfectly, you can’t even tell that they’re new. I’m grateful that the people who have done all this work on our home have been kind, honest, hard workers (who my dogs love, which is important. If your dogs don’t like someone, respect that, because dogs seem to have good instincts about people for some reason.) I’m grateful that, when this is all finished, I don’t think we’ll be able to tell that anything ever happened, because everything is matching close to perfectly.
I haven’t spent this summer making things, like I wanted to. I haven’t started writing anything new. I haven’t spent any time on my blog since June, and though it feels weird, I haven’t really missed it. I feel like I am in this part of my creative cycle where I absorb and consume and get inspired by other people’s creations, so I am nourished and ready for the output part of my creative cycle, whenever it decides to arrive.
I’ve spent this summer reading lots of books, and watching almost one movie a day. I know that sounds like goofing off and fucking around, but for me, it’s a fundamental part of my creative life and my creative self. I get inspired by good things and bad things, and I’ve consumed a lot of both this summer. I have found the same kind of comfort and familiarity in a book that I had when I was a kid: no matter where I am or what’s going on, I can open a book and lose myself in it. I’ve found so much happiness and comfort in the books I’ve read this summer, it’s inspired me to dedicate myself to finishing my novel asap, so I can maybe give people who read it the same escape and happiness I’m getting.
For my novel, I needed to find a slasher movie from pre-83 that wasn’t Friday the 13th or Halloween. It needed to be something that the kids in my story would have rented at the video store, and even though I could have gotten away with using one of those popular and well-known films, I wanted to find something different for reasons I’ll get into when I start writing my “here’s how I did it” posts about the novel, in the run up to its release. The upshot of this is that I’ve watched a TON of early 80s slasher movies this year, and holy shit am I primed to write and make one of my own, because I understand them at a granular level I didn’t think was possible, and I want to see what happens when I make my version of that kind of thing, even if it’s just a short script.
I’m grateful for the time I’ve had to do that level of research (some of them have been fun to watch, others are just terrible, but it’s always been worth it), and I wouldn’t have made the time if my house hadn’t been torn apart. Maybe I’ll even work an unfinished kitchen into the story, as an homage to this whole shitshow.
So. It’s been a summer of mild inconveniences, and I’m grateful and lucky that it isn’t so much worse. I’m grateful for the life I have, and for the people I get to share it with, especially my best friend and wife, Anne. I hope that, wherever you are and whatever your personal circumstances are, you get to share your life with someone who is as special to you as Anne is to me. I hope that you have the privilege (like I do) of looking at bummer things that happen, and finding some perspective that makes them feel less frustrating and annoying than they could be.
This is the first post I’ve written since I deactivated my Twitter. I wonder if anyone will see it? I wonder if I’m wrong about Twitter not making any difference in blog traffic or book sales. I’m going to feel really silly if I am. Anyway, I hope you’re having a good summer, and I hope that any inconveniences you have encountered have been mild.
Thanks for listening.
We voluntarily had our kitchen dismantled earlier this year and it was painful. To have it happen as you describe. You have my sympathies. Kudos for quitting Twitter–should you consider deleting the “share with Twitter” button on your blog page?
I’ve gifted your first book to several (okay, three) people, and appreciate your talent, both as an actor, and as a writer. The humanity that comes through in your posts serves you well in bot fields. I look forward to more.
Insurance is bullshit. Nice perspective you have though.
Still listening, even without Twitter. Thinking about deactivating it myself. Still on Facebook, mainly because I’m a middle aged woman and that seems to be where all of us live now. But chatting with far flung friends on there came in handy with my own hellish summer – involving a bad fall, a knee infection from the fall, an ongoing bad reaction to the antibiotics, and massive depression resulting from all of the above.
Hoping autumn is better for all of us, and that you and Ann get your kitchen back soon, and no more health scares for either of you.
Looking forward to your novel!
If it makes you feel better, I don’t use Twitter to find out when you’ve written a new blog. I literally check this blog every single morning of the work week. It’s become part of my routine. Xkcd, Wil Wheaton’s blog, Youtube to set up my playlist for the day while I work.
I feel like you speak well for the Gen X crowd, of which I am a part, and we use email updates and RSS. Personally, I hate Twitter, love Instagram (I see you there!), and tolerate FB. But I have an RSS reader and I never miss your posts because of it. Twitter is better left to die. Lol.
So sorry about all the mold and inconveniences. But I’m glad to hear you’re back home, even if the fridge is in the middle of the living room. 🙂 Sounds like y’all need to grill more!
So happy to show this on my feed today – you have been missed, Mr. Wheaton. Glad to hear the novel is rolling along – I look forward to purchasing and reading it. Today happens to be my 14th anniversary with my spouse and best friend, so I really grok what you are saying about appreciating the person you get to explore the ups and downs of life with and what a blessing it is to have that someone. Cheers!
I can’t imagine what kind of stuff you’ve had to put up with on Twitter (well, I can a little, since you’ve talked about it before), or what other people go through. I generally have a positive experience on Twitter. My feed doesn’t have a lot of negativity in it unless the Ottawa Senators do something stupid (which has happened a lot recently). I believe my follow list is quite locally based, so maybe that’s why I don’t see a lot of the stupidity and negativity that everyone goes on about?
I appreciated this post by the way, I try to keep perspective when things go wrong too. Glad to know I’m not the only one.
Thanks for sharing. Also I have your blog on my RSS feeder so I will always get an update when you post.
Same. I gave up Twitter some time ago and mainly use Feedly for blog reading.
Looking forward to the novel!
What is the big deal with Twitter? Why do people give it so much power? I prefer to write letters to my Great Creator instead of tweeting to bots, racists, and hated people.
We are dealing with mould in our place too – so glad to hear your perspective on this. LOVE that your editor has your manuscript (that’s totally working, dude.)
And I’m pumped to hear you’ve been reading and watching a lot of movies. (We do that here too at Websterhouse – not necessarily as part of the creative process, though that happens. . . just part of our regular lives. Books whether paper or electronic allow us to explore difficult situations and themes in a safe place. Sometimes it helps me have words to explain or discuss with my family too.)
I am cheering you on, and about to pull out a board game to celebrate in your honour. (It’s Epic Quest, which we discovered through your Tabletop series, and Geek & Sundry channel)
Play some games – you deserve it!
Still with you, Wil. I didn’t realize you completely deactivated your Twitter, as I have also limited my exposure to Twitter. Still, I’ll miss you there. But myself and WWdN were here before, and will be after. You’ll be fine. 🙂
I’ve had a summer of mild inconveniences, too, I guess. There’s a lot going on here, and some of it is pretty shitty, but I’ll get through it. One day at a time. We got this. Congrats on your novel, and keep writing.
Another RSS type here, so I saw your post bright and (ok, not really that) early this morning! (I’m a late riser nowadays, especially on Mondays). Glad to hear that nothing reached the level of catastrophe, and looking forward to the novel!
Huh. I didn’t realize you’d completely deactivated your Twitter, as I have also limited my time there lately. Still, I’ll miss you there. (Quoting A Christmas Story with you was my very first tweet, back in the day.) But myself and WWdN were here before, and will be after. 🙂
I’ve also had a summer of mild inconveniences, I guess. There’s a lot going on here, and some of it is pretty shitty, but I’ll get through it. One day at a time. We got this. Congrats on your novel, and keep writing.
PS: Sorry for the doubled comment (though they are slightly different, I suppose). It didn’t look like it posted the first time. Silly wabbit.
Happy to see another post from you and I’m glad you are in a place to roll with the unexpected surprises in life. 50 year old me would like to go back to 20 year old me, smack myself in the back of the head and say “Chill. Shit happens and you will deal with it successfully.”
Hi Wil. I like how you mention the creative cycle. I think it also corresponds to my cycles of despair/creative intensity/normal for awhile then rinse and repeat. I’d like to just merge the despair and creative intensity and be done, but whatever. Yes Twitter is the swamp for sure. I’m glad to be following you.
-Joe
Another RSS user chiming in! Can’t wait for the novel – please tell me there’s gonna be an audiobook narrated by you!
I also deactivated my Twitter. Twitter was my preferred social media, even though it was full of jerks. It’s hard redirecting what little attention I give to social media to other ones, but now I’ll just be checking my Tumblr and Instagram more, since I never got into snap chat, and I only follow family on FB. I’ve moved your website from my faves folder to the toolbar so I can check it more often and make sure I’m not missing things from you.
I had an issue with my insurance company. Where they got away with not covering something that was BS and they should have covered. But that’s how they are. They make their money by not paying claims. Every claim they make affects their bottom line.
RSS Feed for the win. So glad to see (read) you again! You have been missed. Sorry to hear about your inconveniences and appreciate you sharing your outlook to move past them. Can’t wait to read this novel you keep talking about. 🙂
Sorry to hear about the mold and resulting chaos from that, but certainly glad that it gave you the break you needed. I check your blog (no thank you Twitter) weekly for new posts and count myself blessed & lucky when I find a new one. If it takes a couple months to find a new one, then so be it. I am just happy to read the posts as they come. Take your time, feed the needs. Will certainly be in line to pick up the book when it is ready. Thanks Wil for all that you, and Anne also, do. Very much an inspiration.
I have you on my daily list of bookmarks (old school, I know), so I’m genuinely glad to see you back. I am also glad to see that your own Quest for Positivity is going okay.
twitter is an echo chamber – lots of noise but little content repeated over and over and over …..
keep writing i think your brilliant
Hello Wil, first sorry for your “Mild inconvenience summer” but you dealt with it like a champ as i read so it’s cool.
Second, can you give us your top ten “guilty pleasure slashers” ?
Third : have you seen “My bloody valentine” in your research ?
Fourth : Bye, have a nice day 🙂
I haven’t been by here in years…sounds like you’ve had a time and have come out a better person for it.
Jeepers…if dogs not liking a “bad” person is really a thing then I must be the most horrible person in the world for all the dogs that have barked and attacked me over my 43 years. Especially that one that almost tore my arm off when I was an 8 year old walking to the local arcade to play some Donkey Kong.
Now please excuse me while I go hide in my Cave of Doom to hatch my evil plans. 🙂
Hi, Wil! Oh, boy, home repairs. I’m glad for you, being able to afford the work and the resulting inconveniences.
Yes, always trust your dogs to choose the better people! I find that mine are always better judges of character than I am. Had I paid attention, I could have avoided some bad times.
I am subscribed to your blog, so Twitter has no influence on me seeing it. I don’t use my account for much; I have found that people are more inclined to be nasty when not face to face.
Looking forward to reading the new book!
My best to Anne. Cheers!
Long time reader, first time commenter. You inspired me to leave Twitter (I use it for my business as well) after many years of being grossed out and stressed out by it. People found me before Twitter and they will again. I can get my news elsewhere. And now I won’t be participating in the millions of ad revenue dollars that they rake in from people like Trump, Alex Jones et al. Not interested in contributing to that. I’m sure that you inspired many people to leave.
As for the torn-up house thing – take heart – when you get it back together it’ll be nicer than it was. Take the opportunity to do the things you’ve been wanting to do but didn’t want to start “yet another project”. Want can lights over the sink? Now’s the time to put them in. Old garbage disposal sounds like a grue devouring an adventurer? Now’s the time to replace it.
Congrats on the book progress!
Was here before Twitter and I’m still here now. I prefer your long-form writing and have been missing your regular blog updates.
Oh, eek, house stuff. We had a saga, too; we got an ice dam, and when they went to fix the ice dam — last autumn — turned out that the builders had basically put the roof on wrong. We’d been getting nearly 18 years of water that… was tending to be funneled under the siding, against wood that had no proper tyvek-stuff on it.
So we had to have the whole roof replaced, rather than just the part over the garage. And large chunks of the siding. And a load-bearing corner that was rotted out (and not thick enough to be to code anyway). And a few other things — including one that nearly got to the floorboards on the inside, but NOT QUITE (thank goodness, or he’d have had to come inside and tear up the carpet there). And because of the pounding, and the kid’s insomnia, we did have to live in hotels over weekends. (Spouse stayed home.)
Oh, and the garage ceiling, which is below our bedroom? Was not up to fire code. So all THAT had to have another layer of fire-resistant wall/ceiling board screwed into it. (At least the garage is now painted white and has shelves. Yay.) And an entire window had to be removed (yay, plywood over the gaping hole in my kitchen for a few days…).
Right now, the last thing to do is to get one door — oh, yeah, the door from the garage into outside, and the door to the stairs into the basement, were both the wrong kind of door and were rotting out — ONE DOOR… bought and repainted. We would have had that done, but the door-selling-place cut the deadbolt hole too far from the plate.
So… I FEEL THIS. I FEEL THIS SO MUCH. And it’s SO HARD to deal with MY HOUSE IS NOT FIXED.
(And did insurance pay for any of this? No. It’s all outside the statute of limitations for Bad Builder Built Badly. Yay for spouse buying Apple stock when it was cheap.)
So. If you are stressed by your house not being RIGHT, dear gods you are entitled to the stress. solidarity fistbump
Also you are cool and your painting is cool and your book should be fine.
I’m a book cover designer and I was told by my peers that I NEEDED twitter to succeed. So a few years ago, I gave twitter a shot, posting multiple times a day for 6 months… Searching for interesting, related content, trying to interact with people, Spacing things out so people in all time zones felt inlcuded and all I got was 6 months of work that I will NEVER get back. Now the only thing I use twitter for is to complain to corporations that do bad things (in the world and in my life)
I followed you there…. but it’s a cesspool and I haven’t actually read something there that I wasn’t linked to by someone else in about 2 years.
But, if it helps, I read EVERYTHING you post here.
Twitter is crap. I haven’t been on it for probably 4 years now and no one misses me. Do what you need to do for you, Mr. Wheaton. That’s all that really matters!
I commented before, but I meant to address Twitter: Literally, the only time it was useful to me was when President Obama was on the UNC campus (where I worked), and I was trying to figure out if he was going to walk past the window of my office so I could get a picture. Unfortunately, he didn’t go that way, and my boss wouldn’t let me go to his actual speaking engagement, so I missed out on him. But in that kind of situation, where you are at an event and need to know where to go, or what’s happening, where, it is legitimately helpful. Aside from that…I second what someone else said about tweeting companies when you’re unhappy with their service or their business practices. It seems to get a response more quickly than, say, emailing the company. But, as someone else also said, I read everything you write here because WordPress sends me an email when you post.
Well, I missed you on the blog. I was never into Twitter, so you not being there didn’t affect me much. But I did miss you here.
I just wanted to say that I just recently found your blog, Wil, through nothing more than googling you to see what you’ve been up to. I never jumped on the Twitter train, so I really hope that you leaving the toxic platform will not negatively impact your blog traffic or book sales.
You are an absolutely beautiful writer, and as someone who has been dealing with depression and anxiety for most of their life, your words really speak to me and bring me calmness and perspective. Thank you for that! I am looking forward to continuing to read your blog and books.
Hey, Wil. I’m still catching up via LiveJournal RSS feeds from time to time, and I’m glad I spotted this post. My dogs and I spent nearly a month in a hotel at the insurance company’s expense a couple of years ago, and it was nuts! We were very lucky, and I learned a LOT about how great and adaptable my dogs can be. (Don’t dogs ROCK?)
Sorry about the mess in your kitchen AND the mess on Twitter, but glad to see you’re doing well in general. Don’t stop being awesome and spreading good things.
Kudos on being able to see all the stuff to be grateful for. It’s an inspiration to me because I know that if I was in the same situation, all I’d see would be the inconveniences to myself.
Also, just thought I’d say, I get notified of your posts via RSS, so the lack of Twitter posts doesn’t affect my reading your blog.
To your last point: I keep up on your blog via RSS, so deactivating your Twitter didn’t prevent me from finding this post.
By the way, I’m very impressed by the boldness of deleting your Twitter account. I’ve become more active on Mastodon as well, but I haven’t had the courage to delete my Twitter account.
So glad to see you back on your blog! Sorry about the crap with the house… mold is the worst. Can’t wait to hear more about the novel and your creative process with it. I’m really inspired by your creative pursuits. Hope the fleeting rest of your summer is better!
Ok, so I know it’s been almost 10 days since you wrote this and I am just now seeing but I still say we don’t need Twitter to find each other. At this point, Twitter can’t balance out the bad that it does with any amount good. Thank you for this post. I too have been dealing with a mold invasion of my house this summer and you are so right about the concept of mild inconveniences. When I really look at, it hasn’t been that bad and we are really lucky to be in a position where we can weather this “shit show” as well as we are. Thank you for the reminder to be grateful. I can’t wait for your new book to be published.
Thanks for sharing, I’m a couple weeks behind on my Feedly reading, but was excited to see another post on your blog. I’m glad that you’re able to have a good perspective about the inconveniences you’ve experienced. It shows you’re in a good head space. Looking forward to your book whenever it gets here.
I’ve listened to you all along without Twitter. And i will continue to. Welcome back!
I understand your feelings about your kitchen. I went through something similar years ago and it seemed like it took ages to get everything resolved. Good catch on noticing that it was only an inconvenience though. While you’re living through it, it’s hard to notice the scale!
I can’t even imagine the effort and chaos. Well, maybe on a different level XD just got to my email in awhile, lol. The world turns with and without twitter. Social medias are like crutches, definitely had to distance from mine quite a bit this last year. <3