Well, here’s what I think. I made the following choice. Wesley is, of course, a Traveler. Wesley learned a very long time ago that space, time, and thought are interconnected in ways that the vast majority of sentient beings do not understand and don’t know how to utilize to its full extent. And he has then been able to effectively be a Time Lord and kind of move through space and time. I have decided that whatever species you are from as a Traveler, your physical body will continue to age at a normal rate that is consistent with your species of origin. As I said, I spent some time thinking about this. I have been known to write my own fan fiction about my character.
So Wesley really wanted to be at this moment. He knows that this moment happens. He knows every moment that happens. It’s just part of the terrible knowledge that comes with being a Traveler guy, I guess. And Wesley made a choice: How will they expect me to appear? What will make them comfortable? If I show up as a god-being, it’s going make everything weird and make it all about me and I don’t want it to be that. If I just show up as like a lieutenant… that sounds like a thing that would make sense. Sure, let’s do that. But I get to be at the wedding of my very closest friends and family and I get to see them.
I also talked about one of my ridiculous ideas for Lower Decks:
The story is that Wesley just thinks Mariner is like super cool and just wants to impress Mariner so much. And Mariner could not be more annoyed and just bored and unimpressed with this fucking guy. But Boimler is like, “Do you have any idea who’s on the Cerritos!” Boimler is running around like an incredibly excited dog. He’s like, “I can’t believe it’s happening!” And he just keeps inadvertently cockblocking Wesley. Now Wesley isn’t trying to have anything romantic with Mariner, he just wants her to think that he’s cool. That’s all he cares about. And he just cannot get it done.
That is just so hilarious to me, and so silly, it feels like the kind of thing I could convince Tawny and Jack to do with me just as a reading of a few scenes, you know? Feels like the kind of thing they’d be into.
I mean, how can you NOT want to see this guy reverse some polarities?
On June 24, 2004, my author’s copies of Just A Geek arrived. According to the metadata, I picked the first box up at 8:32pm. What a weirdly granular bit of information to have.
There’s an essay in Still Just A Geek called “Do something kind for future you.” When I was the guy in these pictures, I didn’t understand what that meant. I couldn’t think about future me, because present me needed everything I could give him just to survive.
But the guy in these pictures, who can’t believe he’s a real, published author, who going to spend way too time feeling like a failure, has no idea that he’s giving a gift to future him. He’s holding a Maurader’s Map that I will eventually use to find all the things that were deliberately kept from him, and me. And when I find them, and I tell his and my and our story, he becomes a New York Times bestselling author, because he isn’t alone.
I want the guy in this picture to know that I can remember everything he hopes for at this precise moment, how scared he is that it isn’t going to happen, and how much that prevents him from just enjoying it. I remember his pain, and how he blamed himself for all these things he couldn’t control. I need him to know that he’s going to be okay.
Buddy, you aren’t and weren’t and never were a failure. At ANYTHING. You are enough. You were always enough.
I’ve been doing these very long days of press and promotion for Still Just A Geek. It’s a lot, and it’s exhausting, but it’s awesome and I’m grateful for all of it. I haven’t had this much fun doing late nights followed by early mornings since I was in my 20s.
I’m also still doing Ready Room, so today is a day that featured me getting up at are you fucking serious o’clock, putting myself together for a webinar I was part of for Microsoft, then going straight to the set, where we did a couple episodes for Strange New Worlds (OH MY GOD I WANT TO TALK ABOUT STRANGE NEW WORLDS SO MUCH IT IS KILLING ME THAT I CAN’T).
I am so happy, y’all. I am content, I am grateful, I am proud of the work I have the privilege to do.
… and I am so physically and mentally exhausted. I feel like I’m going to cry.
I’m taking the rest of this day off for religious observance, and I really hope I can find a nap in there, somewhere.
After I posted that, Anne and I had lunch together, and then I went into my gameroom, where I could sit quietly and just … not do anything.
Some time passed. I’m not sure how much, but it was enough for me to start feeling sleepy. I leaned my head back, closed my eyes, and did one of those long exhales that starts in your shoulders and rolls down your body.
Then my phone rang.
Okay. In 2022, few things make me as suspicious as my phone ringing. Nine in ten times, it’s bullshit. This time, I saw that it was my lit agent.
“Hello?”
“Do you have a minute to talk?”
“I do.”
“Okay. I am connecting you to a conference call.”
Over the next thirty or so seconds, literally everyone at my publisher announced themselves. Then my manger announced himself.
Oh fuck. I thought. I’m in big trouble. I dont’ know what I said or did, but I must have REALLY fucked up.
Yeah, I heard it correctly. Still Just A Geek, one week after publication, is on THREE bestselling lists. OMG.
I thanked everyone for being part of this. It’s a blur, but I think I said something like, “it’s important to me that everyone who can hear my voice right now knows how grateful I am for your support and for everything you’ve done to help me get here. I know this isn’t the first time for you, but it is for me and I just don’t know what else to say or to feel.”
I called Anne and told her. Then I called my sister and told her. Then I texted my TNG family and told them. Then I walked around in a circle for what felt like an hour while I tried to process what this all means. I’m still working on putting it all together.
When I wrote Just A Geek in 2004, I knew it wasn’t ever going to chart, but I still held out hope, you know? Like, maybe if this book charts, it will Prove To Everyone and so forth. So there was this disappointment baked in from the very beginning that was identical to the disappointment I allowed to infect everything I did back then. Feeling like you aren’t ever going to be good enough for your dad will do that to you.
So when I wrote and did all the work for Still Just A Geek, I redefined my expectations, and my conditions for success.
I decided that I woudn’t have any expectations, at all. I just hoped that we would somehow communicate to anyone who would be interested in my story that it existed. I wasn’t going to let sales or reviews define for me whether it was successful or not. Just getting to tell my story was enough for me.
But I’m not gonna lie: I’ve been joyfully walking around for about 18 hours, obnoxiously reminding Anne and Marlowe that they now live with a New York Times bestselling author. I have every intention in the world of signing my friends’ cards and stuff, “New York Times Bestselling Author, Wil.”
This is objectively cool and exciting. It is a big deal. I get to update my bio, and for the rest of my life I get to carry this achievement. I love that, and I love that this means my chances of having another book published went up. But more than anything, I love that this can be amazing, and wonderful, and exciting, and such a beautiful gift, without it affecting how I fundamentally feel about myself or my work. I was already proud of the work, and grateful I was supported while I did it, and I am so incredibly happy that I didn’t need this to happen to get there.
When I turned in the final draft, what feels like forever ago, I wrote myself a note that says, in part, “Whatever is going to happen when this is published has already happened. You just haven’t observed the results. What is important and what matters is everything you did to get here. Don’t fall into the trap of letting someone else’s definition of success affect how you feel about your work. No matter what is in our future, we did something special that nobody can take away from us.”
I am so glad that past me consistently looks out for future me. It’s such good advice! I love that guy.
In 2005, I blew up my blog and couldn’t fix it. So I started a backup blog at Typepad, where I wrote and published until 2012.
As I’ve been promoting Still Just A Geek, I am more and more aware of this enormous gap in my story that is a significant part of my journey from 2004 me to 2022 me. I’m not sure how or why it got left out; it just sort of … slipped my mind. Brains and memories are weird that way. But I’m discovering that nearly that entire time is well documented (for better and worse) at WWdN:iX.
So I’ve been slowly revisiting that part of my life, as I consider putting together some sort of novella-length … supplement? I don’t know. Something will replace the graphic that says “SOME TIME LATER” between the end of Just A Geek and the beginning of The Big Bang Theory.
I wrote A LOT about my sons, and our relationship, during this five year mission. It’s rewarding and special to look back at those posts, now, knowing everything I know.
I heard Led Zeppelin coming out of Ryan’s room, so I put down my Sudoku book (yeah, I’ve been hooked for about a month), walked down the hall, and knocked on his door.
“Come in,” he said.
I opened, and entered his sanctuary: astronomy posters hung from his walls, and a stack of books (Les Miserables, The Count of Monte Cristo, Macbeth, Divine Comedy and a host of other books that your average AP English student with a 4.0 in the class reads*) sat on his desk. A pile of (clean? dirty?) clothes lay in a heap at the foot of his bed. He sat at his desk, looking at The Internets.
He turned around in his chair. “What’s up?” He said.
“Oh, I just heard you listening to Zeppelin II, and I didn’t want to miss a chance to share in something we both love, that I happened to introduce to you in the pre-Pod days.”
“I . . . just wondered what you were doing.” I said.
He got very excited. “Oh! I found this awesome Family Guy Website, and I was downloading audioclips from it, and putting them on my computer.” He clicked a few times, and showed me the website.
“When I was your age, I did the same thing, with The Prisoner and Star Trek,” I said, “on my Mac II.”
He frowned. “Weren’t you onStar Trek?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but the sounds were from the original series.”
He looked back at me.
“So it was geeky, but it wasn’t totally lame,” I said. Why did I feel like I our ages and roles were reversed?
“What’s The Prisoner?” He said.
“A show that I love, that I don’t think you’re geeky enough to enjoy.”
He clicked his mouse, and iTunes fell silent.
“Wil,” he said, “you didn’t think I’d like Firefly.”
“Touche,” I said with a smile. “Any time you want to watch The Prisoner, I am so there.”
“Actually, any time you want to do anything, I am so there, because I don’t want to be a stranger to you for the next five years, and I’ll close the gap any way I can.”
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe after school some day next week.”
“When –“
“When my homework’s done,” he said. “I know, Wil.”
He wasn’t snotty. He wasn’t rude. He wasn’t impatient or unpleasant. He just . . . was. I saw a lot of myself in him.
“I need to work my a–” he began, “I need to work very hard this semester.”
I nodded my head. “I’m glad you know that, Ryan.”
He turned back around to his computer. I stood in his doorway and looked at him for a minute.
“He may not have my DNA, but I’ve given him some of the things that matter in life,” I thought.
“Ryan?”
He didn’t turn around. “Hmm?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Wil.”
“Ramble On, And now’s the time, the time is now, to sing my song. I’m goin’ ’round the world, I got to find my girl, on my way. I’ve been this way ten years to the day, Ramble On, Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.”
I unironically ADORE the animated series from the 70s. I was squarely in the target audience, and I guess I’ve never left that part of me behind.
So since this came across my event horizon earlier today, I’ve been OBSESSED. I mean, I was legit bummed Wesley wasn’t on the bridge, but quickly realized it’s perfect that they replaced him what what I think is a Kzinti, the way TAS replaced Chekov with Arex, the Edosian.
I couldn’t remember what species Arex was, so I had to look it up, and I read this, so before we get to the video I want you to watch, check out Leonard Nimoy:
Initially, Filmation was only going to use the voices of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Doohan and Barrett. Doohan and Barrett would also perform the voices of Sulu and Uhura. Nimoy refused to voice Spock in the series unless Nichelle Nichols and George Takei were added to the cast, claiming that Sulu and Uhura were proof of the ethnic diversity of the 23rd century and should not be recast. Nimoy also took this stand as a matter of principle, as he knew of the financial troubles many of his Star Trek co-stars were facing after cancellation of the series.[6]
What an amazing human he was. And how fucking racist were the people who were like “yeah, replace those actors of color with white people to save money.” WOW.
Anyway, check this out. If you’re of a certain age, I expect you will share my reaction when that music starts playing.
Also, if anyone wants to animate Wesley Crusher in the style of Filmation, I would be massively supportive of that.
