Category: blog

in the mirror hypnotized I’m haunted

Posted on By Wil

Yesterday, I mentioned on Bluesky that I’d heard this guy suggest a way to break the doomscrolling Ouroboros we all seem to be stuck in right now: when the urge to resume doomscrolling hits (our brains asking for dopamine), make a choice to be creative instead. Satisfy the brain’s desire for dopamine by making something, instead of chasing that hit from the Internet. It takes a little bit of time, and requires mindfulness, but he says it worked for him.

So I’ve been doing that for a few days, and I have noticed a measurable decrease in my stress and agitation. Instead of looking at the news and hoping for The Headline, I’ve been writing down story ideas, working on this thing I needed to turn in at the end of last year, and playing around with the design of my website.1 And that’s been surprisingly fun and satisfying2! It’s amusing to me, how difficult it was to find a simple theme that just recreated what I was able to do in the Before Times, and I’m not 100% satisfied with it, but the sense memory associated with “tinkering with my blog” has taken me back to a time that wasn’t necessarily happier, or better, or anything like that — I remember how hard it was for me and my family in those day — but it does take me back to moments when I felt like I was making something that mattered3. There was so much fun to be had back then, when we all generally agreed that Nazis were bad and behaved accordingly.

While I was under the hood of my blog, I came across a rather large drafts folder, with a few dozen incomplete posts that I abandoned for one reason or another. One of them, which I posted yesterday, was actually a repost from earlier this year (I’d forgotten that I put the unpublished part of my post into a different post, and now I’ve created a timeloop paradox. Sorry about that), which some of you helpfully pointed out to me.

When I was looking at the unpublished stuff, I found things that were last edited 12 years ago, and almost every year, since. I saw a clear picture of who and where I was in my life then (not always great), and I understood why I didn’t post them. But there were some others that I thought were kinda nice, and I must have talked myself out of posting them for some reason.

I am going to be the person I needed then, and supportively tell my past self that it’s absolutely good enough, he’s good enough, and here is a lovely thing he wrote a long time ago:

Pushing myself through this heavy membrane that separates me from the rest of the world, feeling it stretch and stretch and refuse to break long after it should have.

Then, all of a sudden, it snaps and I’m through it and I’m breathing again and I can feel the air and the world.

And I’m not as tired. Or maybe I’m tired, but I’m tired like a person is tired, because just moving forward is like one of those dreams where you go as hard as you can just taking one step and then another and it feels like you aren’t getting anywhere.

I’m trying my best. I’m doing my best. I know it’s all I can do, and I tell people that when you do your best you should feel proud of yourself no matter what the result but motherfucker that’s hard to do when gravity feels stronger wherever I am than where I’m not.

So I make myself do stuff. I make myself get out and run, and I hurt my leg again and it’s so unfair and I cry and I feel stupid and I just want to give up but I’m not going to. I’m not going to let it win.

I walk a little bit and my leg starts to work that cramp out on its own and pretty soon I can run again. I can’t run as fast as I want to but at least I can run. It’s a bigger victory than it should be but it’s also very small. But it’s something and I need it so I take it.

I’m tired and I don’t want to go anywhere but I press against that goddamn membrane as hard as I can and I go to my friend’s house and I play games and I try real hard not to let them know how bad I feel because we should all just have fun.

And we have fun, and it feels good to be around my friends, and for a little while I forget to feel bad.

I get home and make myself write a story. It isn’t the story I want to write, but it’s a story that I need to write, and it helps me get out some stuff and I remember why I’m a writer.

Me from the past, that’s really sweet and I’m happy for you to embrace the part of you that is a capital-W Writer. I don’t know why you thought you shouldn’t post that — maybe you wanted to say more, or felt too vulnerable — but it’s enough, and so are you. I am standing on your shoulders, doing my best, just like you were. It gets better, buddy, and I need you to know that.

I love you.

  1. I think I’ve settled on Structure Lite, from Organic Themes. ↩︎
  2. In the old days, I had to make any changes to my blog by hand. I had to open up a text editor and do it all in html. I still haven’t wrapped my head around CSS, how styles are inherited, and how to use a stylesheet. I never learned how to use scripting or anything, because I would absolutely break things if I did. ↩︎
  3. I had no idea. ↩︎
blog

perfectly salted soup

Posted on By Wil

In every partnership, a division of labor emerges over time that allows each partner to play to their strengths, stay out of each other’s way, and efficiently get shit done together.

In our house, I do most of the cooking, because I genuinely love everything about it … with one very important exception: I always fuck up the salt.

So I’ll do everything in a recipe until the “salt to taste” step. At that point, I summon Anne (usually with my voice, though in my imagination I am using a bat signal that projects the Morton’s girl with the umbrella) and she uses whatever weird magical skill she has to put in exactly the right amount of salt.

A few weeks ago, I was making soup. Anne had to run to the store when I got to the “salt to taste” step, and I would be lying if I told you that I did not panic, hard. I mean, a normal person would be, like, “Oh, I guess I’ll wait until she gets back,” but not me! Bill Junior was a DAREDEVIL! Just like his old man.

“Look on the Internet,” a mysterious voice echoed in my head, “look for ‘how much salt for two quarts of soup’ and math will save you.”

The voices in my head have never lead me astray (well, except for all those times they did), so I did a quick search.

This is where I tell you that this post isn’t about the salt, but I know at least one of you wants to know the answer, so I’ll also tell you that it’s about a teaspoon, which is what I put into my soup, with trembling hands.

Fuck yeah, math! It was perfect.

But that’s not what this is about. This is about an entirely different recipe that I saw a little further down in the search results; it’s about the Martha Stewart recipe for basic chicken soup.

Martha Stewart always makes food in such interesting ways, I was curious to know what her take was on chicken soup.

Oh my god, it’s incredible.

She tells us to buy a whole chicken, cut it up, and use it to make the stock. Then we pull it out of the stock, cut the meat off the bones, and return that meat into the stock we just made.

Quick aside: this is the point in writing this post that yet another voice in my head asserts that this isn’t interesting and I should just delete it. I’m doing my best to push on through, though.

I showed the recipe to Anne when she got home (after I asked her to taste my properly-salted soup — she loved it) and then texted it to our family chat, because Ryan likes to cook as much as I do (I love that I passed that along to him, without even trying). We all agreed that it looked amazing.

Last night was the first opportunity I’ve had to make this recipe and HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS.

It’s so much fun, it’s so satisfying, and the resulting soup was so magnificent, I almost couldn’t believe that I made it.

And yet, I needed to go further. I needed to make some matzo balls.

That’s also something I’d never done before, but I knew it was simple enough. So I made some matzo meal in the food processor, followed a simple recipe, and ended up with something that wasn’t too bad for a Gentile’s first attempt.

I put it all together and …

It was so good. The matzo balls were a little too big, but that’s an easy fix for next time.

Oh, and … it was perfectly salted.

blog

“…we are all Angelenos who love our city of angels. Our Metro system is an expression of that love for our communities.”

Posted on By Wil

Yesterday, I had the privilege and the honor to emcee the opening of the new Metro A Line light rail extension from Glendora to Pomona.

If you’re local, you know what a big deal this is, and how much of a difference it’s going to make in the lives of tens of thousands of people who no longer have to endure the 60 or the 210 for their commute.

If you’re not local, you’re gonna have to trust me on this: it’s a big deal, a significant investment in our communities that will endure for generations.

And here is the absolute coolest thing about it: our light rail system in Los Angeles only exists because of my friend and mentor, George Takei.

[George] was appointed to the Board by Mayor Tom Bradley. The Board was comprised of an appointee from each of the five County Board of Supervisors, two appointees of the mayor of Los Angeles, and four appointees of the City Selection Committee representing the other municipalities within Los Angeles County contained in the District.

In 1978, Takei was elected Vice-President of the Board.

This Board was tasked with determining the future of passenger rail service, something that hadn’t existed in LA since the Pacific Red Cars were (in my opinion, tragically) decommissioned in 1961. As you can imagine, it faced intense opposition from the usual gang of idiots, so in 1978, when George was on filming Star Trek The Motion Picture, he left the set and went to the board meeting where he cast the deciding vote to approve light rail service for Angelenos.

Think about that for a second. Our entire Metro rail system, which now includes the longest route in the world at over 50 miles, would not exist without George. Never, ever, let them tell you one person can’t make a difference.

I didn’t know any of this until yesterday, so I dropped that story into my prepared remarks, as a way of honoring George’s legacy, Tom Bradley’s legacy, and to celebrate the way Star Trek and its fundamental message of humanist hope are woven throughout the entire Metro system. It was so lovely when all the people who were there cheered for him.

I made myself look like an adult, fooled everyone, and had an absolutely great time. On the train ride back from Pomona to Glendora, I mentioned to Anne that for as long as I can remember, whenever I finish a performance, the only thing I feel is relief; I have always struggled to find joy and satisfaction in a job well done. But yesterday, I felt good about myself. I felt like I wrote a good speech, delivered it well, hit the notes that everyone wanted me to hit, and I felt so happy and maybe even a little bit of pride.

That’s very new for me, and I hope it sticks around.

I posted updates all morning long on my Instagram stories. Behind the jump, I’ll repost all of that stuff, as well as my prepared remarks.

(more…)
blog

that’s what i do; i blink and i type things

Posted on By Wil

I am at my desk, staring at the blinking cursor in my text editor for what feels like an hour. If I were in a movie, the camera would do that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off thing they did with Cameron in the museum, with his eye and the eye in the painting, but with me and the damn cursor.

It just cheerfully sits there, like, “are you doing to do anything? I can blink all day, my dude. I’ll just be sitting here, blinking and waiting. I wait a lot. And I don’t want to make it weird but you’re always staring right at me and not doing anything and it’s kind of creepy. So are you going to actually write anything? Or — oh, hey! Here we go! WHEEE I’m moving to the right an– oh, you stopped. Okay, that’s fine. I’ll just blink while you — WOOOAHHHH now I’m going backward so fast! Oh I think I’m going to be sick!”

After a couple of dry heaves, it continues: “No, no, just more blinking. Okay. Let me catch my breath for a seco- OH GOD WHY DID YOU SELECT ALL OF THAT TEXT I CAN’T EAT ALL OF THAT!

“Gulp, gulp, gulp, burp.” Exhale, gasp. “Oh god that’s a lot. Okay. Okay. You didn’t like those words, I get it. I don’t judge, but if I’m being honest, I didn’t feel them, either. It’s okay, you’re still figuring out these beats. I’m ready when you are. Blink. Blink.

“Oh, you’re getting up and … okay, you’re dusting the bookshelves. Okay, that’s good. You go ahead and I’ll be here when you get back. Just … just blinking. Just blinking because … that’s what I do. I blink and I type things.”

And so it goes, over and over for most of the day. My bookshelves are fucking SPOTLESS.

If we were still doing this with a typewriter, or a yellow pad, my room would be a paper ball pit. Which actually sounds kind of fun, if I’m being totally honest.

Anyway, this is a long way to go so I have something to post today, and it’s a long way to go to say “I eventually got about 190 words that I may even keep, and that’s good enough for me.”

As my dear friend Will says, Onward!

a clever and interesting title that draws the reader in

Posted on By Wil

It’s been one of those days when I do an incredible amount of creative work, but it looked like I spent the whole day just cleaning and unfucking my office while I watched and listened to the latest episode of The Record Junkies, followed immediately by the entire Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

Yes, to the untrained eye, it would appear that I didn’t do any writing work today. But! The creatives among us already know what I’m going to say next: the entire time, I was creating space for the writer’s assistant who lives in my brain (Damon Knight calls his “Fred”, mine is currently unnamed) to help me figure out how to get through this block that’s vexing me. He did a ton of work, pitched a lot of ideas (some of them were even kinda good), and threw away a lot of stuff that’s been cluttering up the space between my idea and a draft I don’t hate. We got a lot accomplished. Maybe tomorrow we’ll actually make words happen.

Then, at the end of the day, I went to the pharmacy and got my flu shot.

Thank you, science!

I’ve been getting the flu shot every year for as long as I can remember, and I can’t remember the last time I had the flu. I feel like these two things may be related. I have a lot of travel scheduled during cold and flu season, and I’d like to keep my streak alive.

Here’s a thought, that came up while I was getting ready to hit publish:

I haven’t written a blog post like this in years. Somewhere along the way, I decided that everything had to be just so, you know? I really got in my own head and in my own way. It doesn’t have to be huge essays or perfect, or some minimum length. It can just be my blog.

Writer’s Block and Creative Paralysis Hate This One Weird Trick!

I’m gonna try to remember that one way to just post more stuff in my blog (because it makes me happy to do that) is to just post more stuff in my blog (because it makes me happy to do that).