Author: Wil

Author, actor, producer. On a good day, I am charming as fuck.
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Out my window there’s nothin’ where a city used to be.

Posted on By Wil

I feel like I should be doing more, making more — hell, making anything — and generally being more productive.

But I just have nothing. No motivation. No ideas. No compulsion to create. I keep feeling like I’m just wasting time, just keeping my head down and hoping that today will be better than the day before and that this string of days will come to an end in a spectacular rebuke of Depression and Anxiety.

But that doesn’t seem to be how this is going. I’m not really living right now. I’m just existing and the frustrating thing is that I know it doesn’t have to be this way, while also knowing that my brain is wired a little sideways and it’s going to be like this until it isn’t, and there’s not a lot I can do about that except realize that this isn’t forever, that I’ll heal the grief that opened up a few months ago, and the fresh pain and grief that recently opened up will eventually join it.

I sit here at my desk and stare are a blinking cursor for what seems like hours. I type a few words and delete them. I get up and walk around the house and up and down the block, trying to shake loose whatever is blocking up my ability to be creative, to feel like it’s worth the effort, and it just doesn’t seem to be working.

I’m doing my best to give myself permission to accept that my brain isn’t really on Team Wil right now, and not beat myself up about it. I’m clinically Depressed at the moment, but I’m still grateful that I can afford to have a string of days (stretching into months, now) that feel sort of debilitating and I don’t have to worry about not making a mortgage payment or feeding myself. All I have to do is take care of myself, take my meds, talk to my therapist, and work on proactive things like meditation and exercise that are usually good and helpful for my wonky brain.

Today, I feel marginally better than I did yesterday, and yesterday I felt marginally better than the day before that. If that’s how it’s going to go, I’m happy to accept marginal and steady improvement, however long it takes.

Can I admit something?

I’m scared. I’m terrified that being unproductive and not creating anything new for weeks or months at a time will catch up with me, the world will move on, and my fifteen minutes will be up before I realize it. I’m feeling my age, and though I pretty regularly feel like my best days and best work is behind me, I know that isn’t true. Now, if I could just convince my brain to accept that and stop trying to make me feel like there’s no reason I should even try to be creative.

I realize that’s irrational, but the Super Happy Funtimes of my particular version of mental illness is really good at making the case for it being correct and inevitable.

And the thing that’s so dumb? Tomorrow, I start work on something awesome that I love, that I deserve, that I get to do because I earned it with my hard work and ability as an actor. I know all of that, but I don’t feel a bit of it … and yet I will go to the studio in the morning and I’ll love that I get to be there, I’ll know that I deserve it, everyone there will be happy to see me, and I’ll feel like a total fraud.

Well, maybe writing about those fears and putting them here will help me trick my brain into giving me a break so I can just enjoy the experience and feel proud of myself, instead of the overwhelming sadness and hopelessness that’s currently filling up my life.

And on that happy note, please allow me to share Riley’s latest creation for our Roll Model campaign, because even in these incredibly dark days, Riley’s creations have brought me some very real and much-needed happiness.

https://shopstands.com/products/wil-wheatons-owlbear-campaign?variant=7160123129904

We’re considering extending this T-shirt, because we’re hearing from lots of folks that they want one, but can’t get it until the end of the week. Let us know in comments if you’re interested, and we’ll make a decision later tonight or tomorrow.

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The Roll Model T is in its final days.

Posted on By Wil

We are in the final days of my Roll Model T-shirt with Stands, and I felt like this was a good opportunity to post all the amazing graphics Riley at Stands has made for me to use during the campaign.

These are all based on original AD&D books, and I love them so much I kind of wish we could make them into prints.

I’ve been busy with work, and struggling with my mental health, for months, now. I’ve learned that a big part of my self care routine is to be grateful for good things, even if they seem very small, because those little bits of light in the darkness can come together to help guide me out of a painful place. These images have reminded me of the decades of joy I’ve had playing D&D, and have reminded me that there have been incredibly good times in my life, even at a time like this when all I can seem to feel is sadness and despair.

So I guess I’m tying to say thank you to Riley and everyone at Stands for not just giving me the opportunity to put something fun into the world (when I was on the Star Trek cruise earlier this month, I saw some people wearing Owl Bear shirts and it made me so happy, like we were fellow travelers who were sharing an inside joke), but also for indirectly granting me a strong connection to happy and joyful memories.

Aren’t they great?! Now I want to go into the game room, pull out my D&D books, and plan a retro campaign for some friends.

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Let me be your roll model

Posted on By Wil

I love working with Stands to make and share fun and clever nerdy stuff, like my Owlbear Conservation Society T-shirt.

It turns out that Stands likes me, too, so we have teamed up again to bring you another fun, clever nerdy shirt that is inspired by.

I hope you get one for yourself, and ten more for your closest friends. We’re giving proceeds to Pasadena Humane Society, because I love animals and want to support the organization that gave me Seamus and Marlowe, so other dogs and cats can find their forever homes.

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radio dot wil wheaton dot net

Posted on By Wil

I’ve been experimenting with a Shoutcast music stream that Mysterious Kevin helped me set up. I have a bunch of different playlists that I rotate through, including 70s punk, 80s metal, 90s ambient electronica, and 90s grunge. I mix in a bunch of random weird and strange files that I find online, including excerpts from Star Trek Power records, ancient European commercials, audio bloopers from various TV shows, and other things you’d expect to find on a mixtape. If you’ve ever heard my podcast mixtapes, you know what to expect.

You should be able to listen to this in any browser, or you can download the .pls file to stream in VLC or the media thingy of your choice. I also think this little player thingy should work right here. If I configured it the way I want, it should even be playing AUTOMATICALLY LIKE MAGIC (I reconfigured this so it doesn’t autoplay, based on your feedback.):

The current playlist (which I expect to keep live all week) is the 80s metal collection. It features some Sabbath, Maiden, Van Halen, Metallica, Scorpions, and stuff like that.

Unrelated: this new WordPress composer (BLOCKS AND BLOCKS AND OTHER BLOCKS IS HOW WE DO IT NOW) is really weird and makes me feel like a very old man who used to hand-code blog entries in raw HTML. I’m sure it’s very powerful and flexible when you get used to it, but right now I feel like I’m writing with someone else’s hands.

ALSO UNRELATED: The Star Trek cruise was amazing and deserves its own entry, but I’ve been decompressing and catching up on work since we got back, and I haven’t had time to sit down to properly compose my thoughts.

RELATED: Van Hagar sucks.

Oh, and also…

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The captain dreams of flying but he’s oh so scared of heights

Posted on By Wil

I’m having a bad mental health day.

Well, I’ve been having a string of bad mental health days.

Ten weeks or so, it seems, and every day is a battle just to get up and face it.

I’m paralyzed by a fear of failure, and that fear is stopping me from creating anything that matters.

Hell, it’s preventing me from creating anything at all.

So I gave myself an exercise today, to see if I can help move this ship that’s been trapped in ice.

I had a simple idea, and I gave myself permission to just spit it out without thinking too much. I decided to write in a style that I don’t normally use, just to crack the ice a little bit.

And because I’m so afraid of failure, I gave myself permission to share this unvarnished, unpolished, trapped-in-ice bunch of words that spilled out of my head.

The monster lives under the bed. It sleeps among the dust bunnies, wraps itself around the box of sweaters, stretches its legs between toys.

It keeps the lost socks. Lost things are desired to be found and that need sustains the monster when the children are not in their beds.

The children know the monster is there, as all children do, having felt its presence in the dark of night. Their parents don’t believe in monsters, as no parents do, having forgotten the truths they knew when they were children.

What the children and the parents don’t know is that the monster under the bed does not threaten on the children.

It protects them. From the other monsters.

The monster in the closet.

The monster who taps at the window when the wind blows.

The monster who lurks in the hallway, just outside the bedroom door.

The monster who stands in the room when the children hide beneath the covers.

The monster who lives under the bed waits for them to come calling. The monster who lives under the bed waits for them to tap on the window or scratch on the walls or creak the closet door open. The monster who lives under the bed waits and when the children are in danger, it reaches out with an impossibly long arm, covered with fur and scales and blisters and oozing pustules. It reaches out and opens a claw, snaps it closed on the neck of the monster who lives in the closet, crushes the life out of the monster who taps on the window, flays the skin off the monster who lurks in the hallway. When the children hide beneath the covers, it breaks the neck of the monster who stands in the dark bedroom.

It protects the children, as it protected their parents, as it will protect the children’s children long after they have grown into parents and forgotten it or any of the other monsters existed.

It protects them

and it waits.

It waits for all the other monsters to be driven out, so that it may uncoil itself, stretch itself out, creep into the bedroom

and feed.

Fifteen or so minutes, 352 words, a few images, an unexpected ending. Something where there wasn’t something before. Something unpolished and raw and imperfect. Something published for the sake a making a thing that isn’t perfect. Okay.

Maybe this will crack the ice, or at least sweep away a few snowdrifts.