14 thoughts on “Radio Free Burrito Presents: Satellite of Fear by Fred A Kummer Jr.”

1. Thanks! Keep ‘em coming, Wil. 👏🏻👏🏻

2. Such a good short story, Thank You, I’m excited to hear more, It was fun escape.

3. I have a 10 year old I can test this out on, and I will report back with my findings. Thanks Wil!
   (P.S. Even though I have not had a chance to listen to many of these recordings you have been doing, I get the new post notifications and I am glad you are doing them!)

4. Thanks Wil, appreciated in these tricky times

5. I went a little insane week before last, during my 7th week WFH (working from home). Rather than always being at home, it instead felt like I could never get away from work. My productivity had dropped to the point where I felt I had to put in ever more time just to get the equivalent of 8 hours work done in a day.

   I was chronically tired in every way, emotionally, mentally and physically. My normally excellent sleep patterns were annihilated. I was working in ever shorter stints separated by ever lengthening periods of recovery. I became unmoored from my daily rhythms.

   I tried to be kinder to myself, cooking more and better, digging into my reading list, posting to my blogs. In desperation I even started paying attention to Facebook (yecch).

   It felt like those efforts were further increasing my isolation, not relieving it in any way. Zoom wasn’t working for me with family and friends (but it’s been great for work). My workouts had dwindled to a minimum: So many of them had been with “workout buddies” I wasn’t seeing. There was nobody pushing me, and I had nobody to push. Having the motivation to do a solo run or bike ride was never one of my strengths.

   Of course this bled into my work. I became very impatient, short-tempered, easily frustrated. It was noticed at the top levels of the company (I’m in a senior position, but my work has visibility). I was “counselled” by three very senior folks to get a grip.

   I didn’t like this me. It wasn’t who I wanted to be, nor who I knew I could be, no who I had worked so hard to become. I felt unable to change, powerless in my own life. I even started looking for a simpler job, something to better match my inability to focus. I was literally a click away from applying to work at Trader Joe’s.

   By Thursday evening before last I felt I was reaching a breaking point. Something had to change. I decided to try to take a total break, in the hope of gaining some perspective. That break needed to be in isolation, as I was in no shape to responsibly or safely interact with anyone.

   I decided to start with watching some light fare from Amazon Prime, and stumbled upon the well-reviewed “Banana in a Nutshell”, an autobiographical documentary from 2005 by New Zelander Roseanne Liang, her first feature-length attempt as a budding videographer. I won’t turn this into a review, other than to share that, despite containing all the goofs and warts of a first-try, it overcame those inherent limitations by making them irrelevant in the arc of the story and the power with which it was navigated.

   I became curious about what Roseanne Liang had been doing since 2005, and found her FLAT3 Productions team that had made multiple series sketch comedy shorts for NZ TV and the web. Like all good comedy, some episodes contained searing truths breaking through their comedy facade. Even the light comedy often contained twists of the knife.

   Some of those knives cut through my gloom, many made tolerable by their sugary comedy coating, others leaving me open and defenseless. I binged every episode, finally falling asleep late Saturday night.

   Last Sunday morning I woke more clearheaded than I had been for weeks. I wouldn’t say I felt better, but I certainly was thinking more clearly. My emotions and personal frustrations were all still there, but were no longer smothering my cognition.

   Two things immediately became clear: I had to get out of the house. And I had to stop working from home. So I decided to combine the two by going back to work, to a building that was 90% empty. I felt I could isolate well there, owing not just to the availability of masks and gloves, but also to the absence of my office-mate.

   With the decision made I began to feel hopeful, but my sleep that night still sucked. In the morning I gathered up all my work equipment and headed in. It was a trying day (in every sense of the word), but a good one. I wasn’t fully productive, but what I did accomplish was extremely refreshing and reassuring.

   Things became better with each passing each day. Friday was simply wonderful. Wonderful in the sense of how normalcy becomes wonderful after trauma. I wasn’t close to my old levels of productivity, and I still had a backlog, but I was getting there!

   I should have gone in to work today, to leverage my improved productivity toward getting caught up. But I’ve decided to make this as close to a “real” weekend as I can, to reclaim another chunk of normalcy.

   I think I’ll listen to a free audiobook while I do the laundry and some light housecleaning. Then maybe step out for a walk, which I will chose to call an extremely slow and relaxed run.

   1. Sounds like classic burnout with a one two punch combo of cabin fever. Always need to make the effort of recharging the ol’ batteries. Much of this is similar to me too, lately I’ve been telling my family “daddys working late tonight” not because I hadn’t been on the clock for my 8h, but because i didn’t personally feel I put in enough during those 8h to justify calling it a full work day.

      This quarantine, my throughput has suffered. I’m pretty sure everyone’s has in some way or another (those of us lucky to work from home)

      And now that I write that, I think thats another important part of this equation: we feel it a lucky privilege to work from home. we “should be thankful”, so to speak. That adds mental pressure to, despite all the distractions of home, put in the exact same levels of expectations on throughput as if we were in the office, or more because “well, im not commuting, im right here, I should be able to get MORE done”

6. Shared on Livejournal. Thanks!

7. I really want to thank you for doing these. My husband & I just finished listening together to “Red Shirts” what a hoot! And what a great reader/actor you are. Thanks for doing these and continuing our listening enjoyment and our Will Wheaton fan club. Best regards, gloria

8. And yet another great one!! Man, I felt as though I was that 10 year old you mentioned, listening to this insane spine tingling space mystery! Sunday afternoon treat indeed! Thanks, Will!

9. Cheers Wil, enjoyed that. Kept me entertained whilst setting up laptops for kids to use for home learning during this lockdown. Keep up the great work 👍

10. I loved your voices in this one, Wil. Such wonderful, 1941 SciFi! I loved it. Thanks so much for doing that for us.

11. First time I’ve listened to you, Wil. Great story and I don’t know how you managed to read it without groaning at some of the outdated language. It may have been “tossing a ball around” but your professionalism shone through.

12. Hi Wil
    I’m just now catching up with you blog. I’m looking forward to listening to your readings and as others have said, ‘keep them coming’. I’ve been enjoying your writings too. I expect there are a lot of frontline workers who clock off and listen as a diversion from the horrors they are encountering at this time.
    I wish you would complete the 2002 story ‘ I want to tell the story of the young girl who sees the carnival come to her small town…’. It sounds intriguing.
    I really loved the ‘profoundly ignorant, following the profoundly evil’…there might be something in this writing thing you’re doing !! 🙂
    All the best from north of the 49th parallel.

13. Will, this one was a lot of fun! Thank you for this RFB Presents series!

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