Category: blog

I went to sleep around 9pm last night, because my alarm was set for 5:15 this morning. I fell asleep quickly, and slept straight through the night, with Marlowe curled up next to my left hip, and our cat, Luna, tucked into my neck.

I slept soundly, until I woke in a panic and saw that the clock said 7:34am. Oh shit I slept through my alarm! I’m supposed to be doing radio interviews! Shit! Shit! Shit!

I jumped out of bed, and ran into the kitchen, disoriented and trying to find my phone, so I could call the number … the number! I can’t remember the number!

I looked around for my laptop, and then realized that not only was it not in my kitchen, I wasn’t in my kitchen, either. Oh, I was in a kitchen, and I suppose it was mine, but I hadn’t been in this kitchen since I was a little boy and we lived in Sunland.

I sat up in bed. It was just a dream. Thank god. I looked at the clock, saw that it was 3 something in the morning, and put my head back onto my pillow. I exhaled as much of the memory of panicked adrenaline as I could, and closed my eyes. Luna began to purr and nuzzled her head back into me.

When the alarm went off, it was still dark. I got out of bed and walked out into my living room, where I saw my dad. I don’t remember what he said, but it was pretty mean for some reason.

I woke up again. It was now 4 something in the morning. Oh, come on…

I would dream at least three more times that I somehow overslept or couldn’t find my number to call or — in one case — was at an amusement park with no payphones for some reason. When my alarm finally did go off, for real, I felt like I was drunk and hadn’t slept at all for several days.

None of the animals moved when I got out of bed. Anne rolled over to one side and muttered something in her sleep as I gently closed our bedroom door behind myself and headed to our actual kitchen to begin the coffee ritual.

Thirty minutes later, I got on the phone and started a three hour radio press tour, working my way Westward across the country to hit morning drive time radio all over America, to talk about The Wil Wheaton Project (TONIGHT AT TEN ON SYFY, Y’ALL), The Big Bang Theory, Tabletop, and Zen And The Art of Being Wil Wheaton. I did fourteen interviews over the three hours, with one five minute break. I drank three cups of coffee, just enough to prevent me from taking a nap — at 830 in the morning — after I was finished.

I live a charmed life.

I am inherently skeptical of media, including drive-time radio, so I told the network that I wouldn’t talk to shock jocks, I wouldn’t talk to the right-wing screamers (not that they’d be interested in me, but I wanted to have all my bases covered) and I wanted to be very clear ahead of time that if they wanted me to make fun of people like me who love the things I do, I wouldn’t be talking with them. I guess everyone got the memo, because with the exception of one 60-second bit on one station (that I hope will be cut if and when the DJs will realize it probably made them come off like dicks after nearly 10 minutes of really nice conversation), I really enjoyed myself.

A few moments after I finished my last interview, I heard our bedroom door open on the other side of the house, followed by the familiar sounds of my dogs waking up and walking around. Marlowe ran into my office, tail wagging like crazy, and jumped her front paws onto my lap. Anne followed, shortly after.

“How did your interviews go?” She said, sleepily.

I told her, and gently pushed Marlowe off of my lap. She’s cute and all, but jumping up uninvited is not okay in Castle Wheaton.

“That’s good,” she said. “Sorry the one thing wasn’t awesome.”

“It’s okay. 60 seconds out of three hours is a really great batting average, and I think that by sincerely and enthusiastically answering the questions they asked as a set up to making fun of me and people like me, I managed to call them out on the premise of their thing without just saying, ‘you guys, just stop. This isn’t cool.'”

“Maybe they’ll cut it out before they air it,” she said.

“I hope so.”

Marlowe sat quietly and patiently at my side, eyes huge, tail wagging.

“Okay, Marlowe,” I said, tapping her on the shoulder. She leaned into me as I stood up. “Do you want your breakfast?” She ran into the kitchen so fast I could see the red shift.

“I’m proud of myself,” I said, “I’ve accomplished more before 9 am than I usually accomplish in a whole day!”

In the kitchen, Riley barked.

“But apparently not enough,” I said. I kissed Anne on the cheek as I passed her and went out to the kitchen to actually start my day.

If you want to read a really nice article about me, geek culture, and The Wil Wheaton Project, Fast Company got it right.

On tonight’s Wil Wheaton Project, my friend Chris Hardwick came by to do something really silly and funny. I don’t want to give away the joke, because I think it’s a good one, but here are some outtakes that don’t give anything away:

I’m grateful to my network for giving me permission to do this, and I hope that it’s only the beginning of me getting to share all sorts of stuff from the show that doesn’t make it into the final cut.

OBLIGATORY ALL-CAPS REMINDER THAT THE WIL WHEATON PROJECT PREMIERES IN TWO AND A HALF HOURS ON SYFY.

In a few hours, I’ll begin recording the first episode of The Wil Wheaton Project. We’ve been working on it for a very long time, and it is a surreal feeling to know that in about 30 hours, my stupid face is going to be a moderately big deal for twenty-one and a half minutes on a major cable network.

I have the same feeling I have before I publish a book, or after I wrap a TV show: I’ve done the best I can to make something I’m proud of, that I think other people will like, but it’s pretty much out of my hands the second we push the beautiful, shiny button … the jolly, candy-like button. Like everything I do as an artist, the best I can hope for is that I don’t get hit by lightning on my way out of the studio. Oh, and that the stuff I think is entertaining and informative lands on the audience the same way.

I know a lot of you reading this don’t subscribe to cable or satellite, and as far as I know, it will be online at Syfy.com and probably Hulu and Hulu+, but I’m not sure how soon after it airs. I also think it’s available as a subscription in iTunes. I know that, because of a number of factors that are completely out of my control, it’s only available in the United States. Totally unrelated to that, I wonder if any of you non-American viewers have ever heard of VPN services like unblock-us.

So I really want everyone in the world to see my show, because I’m super proud of it and I think a lot of you will enjoy it. If you have to use some possibly questionable means to see it, I’m not going to try to stop you. BUT — if you can watch it in some way that the network can score (on broadcast or via one of the legally-supported websites), please do that, because the more people who watch it in a way the network can count, the more likely it is they will order a full season of the show.

This is a big day for me. Thank you to everyone who has helped make it possible.

Everyone who has Depression experiences it in a different way, but I think it’s safe to say that all of us have days when it sits more heavily on us than others. I realized yesterday morning that I’ve been struggling under more depression and anxiety than usual for the last week or so without even being aware of it. Without realizing it, I’d gotten withdrawn and anxious, and because I didn’t really feel irritable, I wasn’t aware of how irritable I was.

I’ve described the metaphysical weight of depression as being similar to that lead apron the dentist puts on you when you get x-rays of your teeth, only it’s draped over your head and shoulders, and sometimes it even covers your face so you can’t see clearly. Without even knowing it’s happening, all you can see is whatever the depression wants to show you, and depression is a lying jerk.

So yesterday, with the kind and loving help of my wife, I realized how heavy my depression has been weighing on me lately. I don’t know exactly how or why it works, but yesterday, like all the other times I’ve realized that depression was doing its best to smother me, becoming aware of it made the weight of it just a little bit better. I still had a pretty rough day, but I also knew that I’d get better. It was like remembering where the light switch was, so I could turn a light on in a dark room, and see the way out of it.

A big part of realizing that I felt so much anxiety and its accompanying depression was figuring out why I felt that way, and I don’t think I could have done it without Anne’s support and patience.

We were sitting on the couch in the living room. The back doors were open, and birds chirped and sang in the back yard. I told her basically what I wrote above, and she said, “You were really angry about the paparazzi when you were in New York, and if your show is successful, that’s probably going to happen again and again.”

“That sounds awful,” I said.

“Yeah, but you can deal with it in a more constructive way that doesn’t make you so angry,” she said.

“I just hate that feeling of being trapped in a hotel, or not in control of my own …” I trailed off, because I had realized exactly why I got so angry, and why I’d been feeling so anxious and depressed for the last few weeks.

“I just realized that the feeling of being trapped, of not being in control of my own life, of feeling like I can’t just do my own thing is a massive emotional trigger for me, because it reminds me of how I felt so often when I was a kid.

“I hated all the press and attention and demands to be some kind of teen superstar, when all I wanted to do was be an actor.”

I described this picture to her, which I think was taken when I was 15. “I look at that, and I feel so sad for that kid. He’s scared, he’s uncomfortable, and he’s doing his best to just get through that moment so he can go back to whatever he was trying to do before a photographer shoved a camera in his face.

“I think I get so angry now because I’m not just upset that my current life was disrupted by these shitbags, but I’m also retroactively angry at how much they disrupted my life when I was a kid.” I looked at the floor for a long time. Our dog, Riley, walked over to me and shoved her face into my hands. I pet her and continued. “And then I get angry at the people who should have been looking out for me, who should have cared about how I was feeling and protected me, but who just told me to suck it up and deal with it because I had to.”

“That makes sense,” she said. “You’ve talked a lot about how you always felt like nobody listened to you when you were a kid, and how you felt like your feelings weren’t as important to the people around you as what they could get out of you.”

“Exactly. I’ve been working basically for myself for the last ten years, with occasional breaks to go work on shows where I feel like I’m working with people, and for the last month or so, I’ve felt like I’m working for people.”

I stopped scratching Riley’s chin, and she put her paw in my lap.

“Well … you kind of are.”

I looked at her.

“…and that’s okay,” she said. “I know you’re feeling overwhelmed, but this is a good thing, isn’t it?”

I lifted Riley’s paw off of me, and pointed to the floor. She lay down at my feet and sighed.

“…it is. I love the people I work with, and the network goons have all been really supportive and awesome. I guess I just … I don’t know how to feel. It’s really great, and it’s really scary, and there’s a lot at stake, and it’s fun, and I’m …”

I took a deep breath and frowned. “I’m afraid to enjoy it, because it probably won’t last.”

It felt good to say it out loud. It felt freeing. I’m supposed to pretend that we’re going to be some kind of massive success and we’re all gonna get laid, but I have done this long enough to know that nothing is certain, nothing is guaranteed, and Firefly was canceled because the network was stupid.

“And on the one hand, if it doesn’t last, all this press and attention that I don’t like goes away. But if it does last–”

“If it does last, you can let the work speak for itself like you want to, and you don’t have to do press, or go places you don’t want to go. But promoting it now is super important because you have to let people know your show exists so they can watch it.”

Riley rolled over on her back. Marlowe walked into the room and stretched out on the floor next to her.

“I know, and I feel like a jerk for having conflicting feelings about it. I guess I haven’t completely dealt with some unresolved childhood issues, and they’re getting stirred up in my stupid brain.”

My cat, Watson, jumped up into my lap and began to purr. He rubbed his face against my hand, then against my chin, and then began to groom my beard.

“I’m really grateful for everything we have, and I don’t mean to imply otherwise,” I said, around Watson’s catfood breath. “I just remember how I felt so unhappy so often when I was a kid, and I don’t want to feel that way again.”

“I know.”

I lifted Watson off of my chest and put him on the couch next to me. He rolled on his back and pushed his head into my thigh. I scratched his chin and his belly.

“I also know that I’ve been letting Depression make me feel like shit for the last month or so, and I know that Depression lies, so I’m probably just fixated on all the worst case stuff, and not paying enough attention to the awesome stuff.”

And the second those words came out of my mouth, it was like someone cast Dispel Depression. I felt the weight of it lift off of me. I saw the light switch in the room, and though I knew it would take a little bit of time before I could walk out, I at least saw the doorway.

I’m going to talk with a therapist about the unresolved emotional issues from when I was a kid, and I’m going to work even harder so that Depression can’t trick me into thinking all this incredibly awesome stuff that I get to do is something I can’t enjoy. It’s going to be a challenge — it always is — but I can do it, because I’ve done it before.

And you know what? It is going to be fun to make The Wil Wheaton Project. I know it will be fun, because it has already been fun, and I think I need to consider the two likely scenarios: if we only do 12, I get to go back to my normal life at the end of the summer after working with some really great people and doing something we’re proud of. If we end up doing more than that, I can let the work speak for itself, and I’ll learn to adjust to a new normal in my life, because the really valuable and important bits of my life — my wife, my kids, our home, burritos and beer — are going to be here no matter what I do for my job, and nobody can take them away from me, not even Depression.

“I feel a lot better,” I said. “Thanks for listening to me.”

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too.”