147 thoughts on “Out my window there’s nothin’ where a city used to be.”

1. I have a question… Have you tried going Gluten Free? I was reading through the comments after I had written my initial post, and something came into my mind, that I want to share with you. I am Gluten Free, but not by choice. Sometimes, I miss eating fresh bread, donuts, and other gluten-filled deliciousness. A couple weeks ago, I decided to try eating gluten, again. Maybe, I had grown out of the intolerance. So, I had eaten a week worth of gluten and then started feeling depressed. After, I had gotten the gluten out of my system the depression went away.

   I have a medical history of having severe depression. I used to take a medication to treat it but started having side effects. In 2017, I went off of my medication because the side effects were horrible. I was recommended to a therapist, who I ended up not liking. That was when I decided to take things into my own hands. I learned acceptance, which helped me let go of a lot of my emotional weight. And, I put myself in uncomfortable situations to get rid of most of my anxiety. So, I know what it is like to struggle with depression and anxiety. I also know that we all don’t heal the same way.

   Anyway, I wonder if giving up the gluten for 2 or 3 months would improve your symptoms of depression and anxiety? It is worth a try. You won’t starve, either. There are plenty of delicious gluten-free foods on the market. And if the gluten-free diet helps you, it might be worth continuing.

   https://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/therese-borchard-sanity-break/gluten-depression-and-anxiety-gut-brain-link/
   https://universityhealthnews.com/daily/depression/the-surprising-link-between-gluten-and-depression/
   https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201410/is-gluten-causing-your-depression
   https://celiac.org/about-the-foundation/featured-news/2014/07/gluten-may-cause-depression-people-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity/

   1. Yeah, I feel you, Wil. I’m just trying to keep my head down and finish my degree and then worry about what comes next, later. A part of me knows I should be expanding my social network (I.e. making some friends who share some common interests) and looking for an internship in the summer, but I just can’t think about that without feeling sick to my stomach. I like routine. Unfortunately, my routine has become the following: wake up, shower, go to class, go home, watch twitch/game a bit or watch the hockey game (if there’s one on), go to bed. Nothing new ever happens. My mind wanders all the time, looking for some inspiration, some reason to be excited for the next day, but I can’t find it. My degree is boring, but I keep telling myself I can be creative and find my true calling one day if I just stick it out and finish my undergrad.

      TLdr, I’m struggling right now, but I have a home, a blog I rarely post to, and I’m a fan of a Toronto Maple Leafs team that is actually fun to watch right now and that cheers me up. So, thank your Kings for trading Muzzin to us because we badly needed a Dman who actually hits players and blocks shots. And hang in there, Wil. I hope to read something you’ve written or watch something you’re involved with soon. Go Leafs Go!

   2. Hello Wil. I am sorry you are feeling this way. I was very happy to see you and your wife on the cruise having fun. I hope you find your way through this. You do bring a lot of joy to so many. I am sure I am one of thousands of fans of yours and you have probably heard it all. For me personally, I had the time of my life on that cruise. Never in my mind did I ever think I would meet all of you from TNG! That was certainly a bucket list thing for me. Thank you so much for joining us. My husband and I purchased a pic with you and I got a fist bump! Such a surreal experience. I’m sure a lot of that was draining for you, but I hope you did get some joy out of it. All this to say, again, you bring joy to so many. You are talented and creative. You will find your way. I sincerely hope you have a good rest of your day. ~Belen from Visalia, CA

2. Hi Wil,

   You don’t know me, I’m just a schlubby dad from Canada, who grew up loving Star Trek and has followed your online stuff for a while. I know you’re going through a bad time and I just wanted to say hang in there. I also wanted to thank you for sharing about your struggles, If you hadn’t I don’t know where my life would be but I think it would be someplace not so great. I’ve struggled with Anxiety and Depression since I graduated college, but the catch is I didn’t know what it was until a few years ago when you shared about your experience in an airport and described having a panic attack. It was such a mirror to my own experiences that I could no longer deny I had a problem that needed to be addressed. Because of that I got help, I’ve made changes in my life for the better, and I just wanted to say thank you.

3. Wil I know what you mean about the being scared,I have been fighting the Anxiety/Depression monster since i was 23 and am now going on 62..Where has My life gone? It sucks, You are a young guy and you are going to be OK. (hugs}

4. I don’t know what to say except, thank you for sharing a part of your life with us. There will always be people who love you, at your side and hear what you are saying. Hugs

5. I feel this too. I feel this so hard, minus all the stuff about working on an awesome thing and feeling like you should be happy. I should be happy that I have a job at all, even if I don’t remotely like it like I used to, lots of young folks my age don’t have full time work. But I just…don’t feel happy. AT all. Ever. I haven’t written in months and I feel like I’m not getting near as much from my acting class as I used to.

   Depression is a jerkface and so is Anxiety and one day, hopefully soon, we’ll both feel better again.

   1. Hugs to you, Beth.

6. Hey Wil, I also suffer from feeling like a fraud. I’ve been planning vacations for people for 17 years. More than 20,000 hours of my life has gone to planning other people’s vacations, but the world is so goddamn big and I can never know it all. I struggle with what I don’t know, and just try to do my best with what I do know. I am also existing. The kids have the next two days of school off for cold temperatures, and those will be the tenth and ELEVENTH goddamn days off this month. I’m really overwhelmed. Hardwick was on his podcast recently talking to Elizabeth Reaser who’s from Michigan and he’s like, I need sun and warm air – I don’t know how people live there. I get depressed when it’s gloomy out. I ALSO NEED SUN AND WARM AIR. We summer people just suffer through it. The cold, the gloom. It’s depressing. It’s going to be -14 tomorrow or some horseshit and I wanna GO OUTSIDE. I’ll take the kids to open swim, the pool is 90 degrees. It will be great until we get outside and our hair freezes. Sorry I keep yelling. I cannot wait for spring. Moving somewhere warm year round is daunting when your whole life is, and always has been, this one place.
   How is the novella coming along? The next thing is around the corner, but your brain is being a dick. I promise.
   I miss you around the interwebs and the emails. Take care of yourself. We will be waiting.
   Hoping for some secret store fun, or an eBay auction for a dented ping pong ball.
   Sending adorable kid stuff last: Last week Zoey was talking to Alice and she said, “Alice do you love me?” and Alice said, “of course! I love you forever!”

7. Hi Wil, There are so many understanding and supportive comments here already, and many folks who also suffer from debilitating mental illness. I don’t know if I can add anything new, but I wanted to add my voice to the chorus. I can so empathize with many the thoughts and emotions you describe here. You were “singing my life with your words.” I’m 58 and have had major depression going on 12 years now. Mine is refractory — many antidepressants in every class and even some in other classes of drugs that I’ve tried have never got my mood above a certain level. I can go way lower but i can’t really get any higher. Currently I’m on a combination of 3 meds for the depression and they seem to be doing ok. My threshold is kinda sorta feeling not too bad except for having suicidal automatic thoughts. They pop up pretty much daily, sometimes a little less. No medication has gotten rid of them. They generally go away after a few minutes but I often catch myself dwelling on them . . . thinking of the various ways it could happen without settling on a plan. My daughter is the main reason I’m still alive. I can remember many years ago telling my therapist at the time that I’d lived long enough. I still can get to feeling that way sometimes, but I can talk my way out of it. I have a current therapist and everything so I’m dealing.

   I can also relate to that feeling of a total lack of desire to do anything creative. Recently I had that feeling for many months and I thought it might be medication induced. I talked to my Nurse Practitioner and therapist who were kind of at a loss, but very recently, without any medication changes, my creativity wandered back in like a cat who had been away so long you thought it was dead. So I’ve jumped on it and got back to rewriting an old novel that I can’t give up on. I hope the feeling lasts.

   Wil, I hope the grief heals sooner rather than later. We both know that it will in time, to a large degree, but it’s like being in a car crash until it does.

   1. I love the cat simile.

      Ruth

8. i hope every day continues to be in a marginally better direction, and i hope getting to do some work you love helps. (and we will miss you on the nerd boat!)

9. I’m excited to find out what you’ll be working on starting tomorrow!

   I know you may not read this and I don’t have any advice on what to eat or feel or think, hehe…. BUT in recent months you have been posting about finishing your novel, and how exciting it was when it all came together and you made (or were making) those final edits. I wanted to tell you that I was super inspired and thrilled for you when I read those posts. I was excited and eager to read the published result whenever it was ready, and I was inspired by the very way you wrote about your work and your process. It made me feel like if I just put butt-into-chair and kept going, and going, and going, I could find the same results some day. I wish I could put this feeling into words, but the way you wrote about it really and truly lit a fire under me.

   All this is to say, from at least one fan’s standpoint (and I would venture to guess, I’m not alone), you are NOT a fraud, by any means at all. Not even close. You have created so much freaking cool stuff already! xo

10. What’s wrong with just existing? Who made the rule that says you should be productive, producing, creating all the time and that if you’re not, you’re somehow a failure? So what if your best work is behind you? Maybe your best life is in front of you, without any work in it, but with plenty of games and dog kisses and walks on the beach and laughter. Maybe your fifteen minutes is up and that means you get to relax now and do what makes you happy. And if today what makes you happy is to stop trying to find words and instead… I don’t know, bake some granola, so be it.

    Also — you finished writing a book in September! Seriously, your brain is so mean to you. Your average person would ride on that sense of success and achievement for at least a year, maybe two or three years. You don’t even give yourself six months to be satisfied before you start beating yourself up about not doing more. I get that it’s the depression that’s doing it, but you’ve got some kind of Puritan work ethic thing going on that needs to be dragged out into the light and examined in depth. You matter. And you will matter even if you never work another day in your life.

11. You’re absolutely not a fraud. You’re so talented and a wonderful person. And you really help people by putting these thoughts out there. I stay up and read your blog when I have really bad anxiety and it really makes me feel better. Thank you for being you.

12. Wil – you are my hero in acknowledging your depression and helping us through your process, as we go through something similar I saw this as I came out of anesthesia fog and couldn’t believe you captured my feeling of “old.” you’ve got this, bud. And we love you because of who you are. Trust me. You’ve got this.

13. I wouldn’t presume to tell you not to be depressed, or that you could bust out of your creative slump just by trying harder–not only would it be presumptuous, it would be wrong. But I can encourage you not to beat yourself up over it. It happens to all of us. Try to give yourself the time to heal.

14. I just wanted to thank you for sharing your story with us. After hearing you speak on the cruise, I decided to get help for myself. If it wasn’t for you, I’m not sure if i would have had the courage to actually ask for help. And i can’t wait to see your new project. 😉

15. I want to buy the Roll Model shirt, but i won’t be able to afford it until Friday. So, I’m all for you extending the campaign. Pretty please.

16. Just ordered a shirt!

    Your description of a view out the window of a city that is gone, sounds cyclic, reminding me of Cole’s “Rise and Fall of Civilization.” I recall various dreams you have described, that sound like they are from the same neighborhood, within your own subconscious city. As an art historian, I can’t help but to correlate the “art window” with your dystopian title description. And as an artist, it makes me think of my own current piece, in progress for an upcoming jury, for a show themed on using recycled materials. My piece is an aerial view of a futuristic vision of planet earth, where humanity recycles and repurposes all materials in the making of their cities. This work-in-progress is made of found bottlecaps, lids, and plastic kibble, permanently attached to a 48″x24″ surface, covered in several layers of black gesso, and then covered in a few layers of modeling paste, which is where it is at now. It too has a dystopian feel, but really it is like new growth. The next step is more gesso, and then earth tone, and indusrial tone, scale model painting. It is an entire world made of repurposed, discarded bits and pieces, and it is awesome. The final touch will be the frame. It sounds like your city is simply invisible, or vieled. Your work as an actor is extremely important, and your help conveying the stories of the writers, and representing multi-faceted dynamics and layers of information, has had a profound impact on me, and has been integral to my media study research. I can’t thank you enough for all you have already contributed, let alone what the future holds.

17. Will… Thank you for writing this.

    I’ve been going through much the same for the last year or so. I’m a “successful” video game developer dude, and by all accounts, everything is going great. Working with a great team on a great project that will eventually bring a whole lot of joy to people all over the globe. Working from home, loving family, generally stable life. And yet… I’m sleepwalking most of the time. I feel like the world is vibrant, and full of wonder, and moving oh so fast… leaving me behind. I’ve got personal projects that I’m “passionate” about… but most days (today included), it just feels like so much effort just to meet life’s Minimum System Requirements, that there’s just not enough bandwidth left for the Important Things… certainly less than there used to be. I don’t know if it’s just Getting Older… or Parenting…. or Life In Post-2016…. or (most likely) All Of The Above. But I’m scared. Scared of things getting worse… scared of not even being able to meet the status quo anymore.

    So anyway. Thank you for being so open about this stuff. I have never met you, but have followed your antics for decades. You seem like a genuinely decent person who strives to do good in the world. We need more like you. And I hope that we both find the handholds we need to give back.

    Your post has me thinking I should go get some exercise now. Maybe it’ll help. To the elliptical!

    -e

18. Wil, my heart aches for you. I think you are absolutely wonderful and it isn’t fair that your brain is giving you a hard time. Hugs through the internet and a real one the next time I get to see you again.

    SeaMonkey Laurie

19. Bro, let’s be real here.

    AI is going to replace us all.

    “Even your hilarious Internet comments, Spudnuts?!”

    Yes.

    We’re doomed.

    But… AI is also going to give us that Nic Cage Superman film we’ve all been waiting for. In VR, no less.

20. Hi Wil,
    It’s always two entirely different things to KNOW something and to actually FEEL IT, isn’t it? sigh
    I sincerely hope that you go into the studio tomorrow and your brain lets you KNOW AND FEEL like you really deserve to be there.

    Also, I was just about to order a Role Model shirt, when my wife stopped me, saying that she already ordered me one. So, I ordered an Owlbear Conservation one for her, instead. 🙂

21. Wil, I know things feel bad but, as much as I hate to do it, I’m going t give you the pep talk you’ve given others. You have people who love and care about you. You matter to lots of people, including me. You are doing great work in trying to limit or eliminate the stigma that goes with having a WonkyBrain (TM pending). Quite simply, this, too, shall pass. maybe not today or tomorrow, but it WILL pass.
    Eat as well as you can, sleep as well as you can, get some sunshine when you can, get moving (walk, jog, whatever) and keep on doing the things you need to do to try to feel more “normal”.
    I can’t say I know what you’re feeling but I CAN say I understand. I also fight depression and what I call the “you suck”s. It’s an ongoing struggle. Winter is hardest because I cant get outside as much and it tends to be cold, wet and gray where I am. But I make it through one day at a time, sometimes one hour a a time, and so can you. You can do this, internet buddy. I believe in you and so do lots of other people.
    I would gladly email you anytime if needed.

22. You are a wonderful person and your writing give me inspiration whenever you share the darker “stuff”. Including me, there are members of my family who experience depression, anxiety, and panic attacks across a spectrum. Your words definitely helps others because they don’t feel alone, especially with the damned struggle to get your brain on board with what you’d like to do in a day. I hope that the comments here help you the way they make me and others feel better. Thanks for being who you are and for such candid sharing.
    Wishing peace to you from a longtime fan in Canada, Wil. ✌️

23. Wil, thank you for your honesty. I am working through yet another depressive episode at the moment, just trying to stay afloat. But you and I, we are not alone. Your work is good, and you are enough, just as you are right now. Everything you have accomplished up to now is valued and important, and so are you. Creative energy is a tide that goes in and out on its own schedule. I know, I know–these things are easier to say than they are to believe, sometimes. Let those of us that admire and respect you and your work hold these truths for you until you can believe them again.

24. I’m just another voice in the chorus that sings better than I can. Wil, like everyone else, I hope your brain re-boots in a properly functional mode. The Depression Morass just sucks us all down. It’s amazing and frightening to know how many of us there are.

    Sending support and understanding,
    Ruth

25. PS, I bought a shirt for your great cause! I’m a newbie DnD player. Let’s hope you can keep the sale campaign open till the end of the week for the others on here waiting till they have the funds to order. 👍

26. I don’t have any ideas, not having experienced this. My suggestion is to get a puppy and focus on it for a while.

27. Wil, I have depression too (big surprise) and am in one of my longest down “stints” right now. Thank you for your creativity. Please, if you can, try to turn off the American pressure cooker culture that we are only as good as our latest accomplishment. Just be. Maybe your best work is behind you, that’s okay. 1. You’ve already accomplished major wonderful things (as you said, you intellectually know this). 2. Your worth isn’t your accomplishments. Your wife, kids, friends, family, and fans value you above your accomplishments. (As I’m sure you intellectually know this too.)

    I heard something a while ago and can’t remember where I heard it but broke through some denial I was in. One of the symptoms of depression can be creating “largely self-imposed” to-do lists. I looked at my to-do list, the one that was making me feel so much stress and anxiety and realized I was the only one that cared about most of the items.

    One other thing I hope it is okay to reflect back to you is something that my therapist has to remind me of a lot. Depression is usually about the past, anxiety is about the future. Your fear is about the future. Remember your meditation and live in the moment. In the moment, you have nothing to fear. Let tomorrow unfold as it may.

    I hope I do not offend. These are a just words and I don’t want them to minimize your very real feelings. Just trying to help you and anyone else stuck in this horrible disease I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

28. Wil, you’ve inspired me to take up writing again when I had convinced myself that no one really cared, that I had nothing special to say. I remember watching you on Star Trek, and that was awesome. But that wasn’t Wesley Crusher that inspired me. It wasn’t even the Wil Wheaton that weathered the larval form of internet trolls gestated in the alt.garbage.opinions corners of Usenet. It was the Wil that sometimes felt like a fraud, but kept trying. The Wil that faced struggles I found so familiar and came out the other end a better actor, a better writer and a better person each time.

    I know your brain won’t want to let you hear this (because so often my brain doesn’t when people try to tell me good things about myself either), but I’m going to say it anyway: Even when you don’t believe in yourself, there are so many of us all around the world whose lives you’ve touched, and left them better for it. We believe in you. Hey, we can’t all be wrong, can we?

29. Hang in there, Wil, we still need you. Don’t listen to your brain, you are very much still wanted and needed. You always will be, because you are so creative and multi talented. Never fear!

30. I am so sorry you are having such a rough time. I would think it must be very hard to remember that this will pass. That you are more than your productivity. That the people who love your love you, not your work. Your work is wonderful and you are more than wonderful. You are beloved.

31. You are not alone.

    1. Strong Wall or Voodoo callback!

32. Hey there, thanks as always for sharing! You are not alone, those who really appreciate your work, those who are your circle, those who are your life are at the other side of that glass wall. The glass is getting thinner everyday, some day you will break through and feel all this positivity in every molecule of your being and you will be able to accept it. Hold on!

33. That so absolutely sucks 🙁 I wish I could do something to help even though I know I can’t. I’m sending you a lot of hugs and hope that your brain will allow you to feel all the things you already know are true.

34. Something I had to learn over time it turned out to help me a lot: you don’t have to be productive to be a valuable human being.

35. Hi Wil. I suffer with depression and anxiety too and so I wanted to send love and support. Depression is a pathological liar and what it tells you about yourself is not true. I grew up with Star Trek TNG and it was a massive part of surviving bullying at school (for being a nerd). I have always loved Star Trek but the character of Wesley allowed me to connect with it in a way I never had before. You were brilliant! When I saw you on the Big Bang for the first time I screamed and nearly fell off my seat….you are brilliant in that too. So whilst depression is busy lying to you listen to the rest of us who want to tell you that you deserve your success and your future is bright. X x

36. Wil, this may have already been said, but you created this post, something where there was nothing. Take heart in the fact that you’ve helped and comforted THOUSANDS in your writing about The Asshole Depression.

37. Have you thought about teaching? You have a lot to offer, and while teaching is a lot of work and often very hard, it can be very creative and rewarding.

38. For the record? I was a casual watcher of TNG, but I became a fan of yours through your writing. And the fact that you’re willing to share even the hard parts, and to be so open about your experiences with mental illness, mean more to me than any brilliant acting or fiction writing you could ever do. I get that you can’t be creative all of the time, and I get how terrifying that is, but there are a whole lot of us out here who will still be here whenever your brain stops being a dick, and will be happy to celebrate whatever you can create whenever you can create it. Meanwhile, just try to be as kind to yourself as you can.

39. Hey, I know how that feels.

40. I am sorry you are hurting, and thank you for sharing. It really does help others with the same struggles.

    I replied a few days ago when you talked about this on Facebook, but not sure if it got lost in the noise, so I will post again here in case it can help. I recall earlier this year you were taking CDB oil for your anxiety. I recently learned that CDB acts similar to grapefruit and can deactivate or reduce the effectiveness of some anti-depressants (I know for sure Latuda. Possibly others). My wife was trying if because she can’t take benzodiazapan based anxiety meds, and her depression almost immediately started getting worse. Her psychiatrist who recommended the CDB was unaware of this interaction until we did some research and discovered it.

41. Hey Uncle Wil.

    You’re not alone. I struggle every day with feeling like utter shit, like I’m not doing anything important and that whatever best days I might have had are fucking behind me because I’m old and schlubby now. A lot of times it’s a struggle to come up with content for my blog that my small but merry band of readers will want to read, enjoy and comment on. Depression thinks it’s going to win, but I think it’s more of a tug of war right now where both sides are equally matched and every time I pull hard and manage to get that much closer to winning, Depression and Anxiety yank me back twice as hard in the other direction.

    Keep fighting. Keep doing all the things you need to do. For me, it’s meditating and going to the gym even when I feel like shit and don’t want to go. Whatever is in your head that wants to get out might be behind a wall right now, but it will get out eventually.

42. I know you’ve gotten a bunch of supportive comments already and that giving advice to someone you don’t know is sketchy at best (and also, you didn’t ask for advice in this post). But I feel this entry so hard–I had a bad depressive episode about 4 years ago and one of the things that walked away and didn’t come back was any writing discipline I had. I’m still trying to recreate it. So I wanted to mention two things that helped me:

    -An exercise I call write-by-numbers. I would take scenes that I liked from a TV show or a movie and basically write a novelization of it. It helped me keep my writing chops up, but it didn’t put huge expectations on me to create, something that my imagination was having a hard time doing at the moment. Having a project also helped.

    -You’re probably familiar with Julia Cameron’s concept of morning pages? Three pages of longhand that you write every morning. Just stream of consciousness, brain dump stuff. I want to do morning pages but don’t have the discipline yet, so I made the goal stupid small and I do morning bullet points. I try to bullet stuff throughout the day. It’s basically tweeting in my journal. I’m hoping that soon I will level up to writing Morning Complete Sentences.

    You’ve helped me and so many others with kind words and wisdom around mental health, so I hope it’s okay that I say to you what you’ve said to so many others: It’s okay to be struggling. Your creativity will come back. Please be safe. Give Marlowe and Seamus a cuddle. And check in in a few days and let us know how you’re doing, okay? (Okay, maybe not that last one, as I realize it’s a lopsided relationship. But you always say that on tumblr, and when you said it to me, I felt seen, and I felt kindness from you, and I felt like I mattered. You matter, Wil. Even when you’re struggling with your own self you reach out to people with kindness and compassion and that matters. Please do not let your dumb brain tell you otherwise.)

43. Your creativity may be hiding a bit for now, but I am thankful you were able to write the words you did in regards to depression. It’s hard to describe the feeling of nothingness that lingers around as the body takes over daily tasks and routines. My heart aches for your struggle. The struggle so many of us live with and have difficulty describing to those who have never felt the void. But please keep writing during this, even when it is hard. I for one appreciate your ability to put into words the struggle you are facing. It helped me feel less alone and a little bit more “normal.” Once upon a time you made it okay for people to be nerds without shame. Thank you for doing the same for people with depression.

44. Your talking honestly about your struggle with depression is one of the things that encouraged me to get help myself. We all root for you. Take the time you need.

45. Thank you for sharing, Wil; I know (or at least, I assume) that I’m not depressed but it’s helpful to read about people struggling creatively the same way that I do. I shared your post on Twitter for Bell’s Let’s Talk campaign – I know you don’t do Twitter anymore but I thought that you’d like to know something positive can happen there once in a while!

    I think it’s important that you share your experiences with depression with other people. I’m glad that you’re working on a new project that you love! Hope to hear about it soon.

    On another note – since you are pretty big in the voice acting scene, do you have any advice on how to get into that field? I don’t necessarily want to act but I feel like I could contribute to voice overs, commercials, etc. But I just don’t know where to start.

    1. Steve,

       I know I’m not Wil, but may I say that where I live, the continuing ed program offered by the local school district routinely offers a class on doing voice work and how to get into the business. You might check with whatever adult ed exists in your area and see if there are any similar classes.

       Ruth

       1. Hi Ruth, thanks for the reply. I guess I should have mentioned I do have a diploma for radio broadcasting and currently work (off air) in radio – so while I could probably use some refreshers on good practices for my voice, I don’t think I’m interested in seeking out more formal training. However your suggestion of looking into local schools sounds like a good one in terms of reaching out / finding connections that way and one I didn’t think about. I’ll look into that, thank you! 🙂

          1. Steve,
             Yes, it does sound like you’re way past an intro course! Good luck!

46. Just a thought here, but what is wrong with just resting? You’ve been super busy lately (finished that book, remember?) and maybe – just maybe – your brain needs to relax to rejuvenate and get ready for the Next Project. No one – no one – can handle 24/7/365 workload without burnout or worse.

    Give yourself a break, kid. You deserve it.

47. I am not going to fall in the trap of being one of those people who talks too much about themselves when something bad happens to someone else. I’ll say that I’ve been there, will be there again, because thems the breaks – you have high and low days. You just gotta enjoy the highs and remember during the lows that the highs are coming back. Also, distraction helps me during low days. Movies, books, music, art, whatever’s someone else’s creative work. I find that if I can’t rely on my own emotions I can go take a ride on someone else’s for a while. That way at least I end up somewhere else than I would have.

48. Wil, I hope today on set has been a better day for you. It was for me. 🙂 IMO, any day on set is a great day, and I don’t even have 1% of the career you have! That said, when you get home and back in your head or wherever you sit in D and A, I highly recommend reading “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert. I’m going to record it as an audiobook (just for myself, as I’m sure the professional audiobook exists), as a boost to my own creative juices. I’ll probably start that tomorrow, if the seasonal allergies have given me back my voice. Yeah, I lost my voice, so that’s fun. :/

49. Hi Wil. I know I’m just this guy from Winnipeg that you’ve never met, and I obviously can’t know exactly what you’re experiencing, but I kinda know what you’re experiencing.

    I also know that one person’s tactic won’t necessarily work for everyone, but when I’m lost in the throes of a profound lack of inspiration, I watch ze frank’s “An Invocation for Beginnings” video (even if it’s not actually a beginning).

    So, from me to you, here’s the gift of a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYlCVwxoL_g

    I know you’ll get through it, but I hope you get through it sooner rather than later.

50. My Dear Invisible Friend Who Lives In My Computer,

    Impostor Syndrome hits us all sometimes (and some of us, it hits nearly all the time). (Anyone whose ego isn’t bigger than a semi, that is — and they’ve got their own issues, of course.) So while it’s possible that your jerk-of-a-brain is making that worse than it oughtta be, some of that is just the joy (sarcasm) of being human. Good news! You’re normal there! 🙂

    For your worry that your 15 minutes will be up… Yeah. It might happen. (I could lie, but what good does that do any of us?) But you’ve also got a core of people who like you. Just as you. Whether you produce new content or not. That’s not going to change. Yeah, you’ll lose some people sometimes, and gain other people sometimes. But basically you’re a kind of friend to many of us. And friends are people who like you for who you are, not for what you do.

    You keep being you. We’ll keep being here.

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