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Today, I will finish the narration for Still Just A Geek.

Nerds, I have to be honest with you. I suck at self-promotion. There was a time in my life when I was reasonably good at it, but now I’m just terrible.

My memoir, Still Just A Geek, is going to be released in like 34 days. Today, I will finish the audiobook narration. I have lots and lots to say about it, and I will when I have time to catch my breath and reflect.

Until then, though, I wanted everyone to know about this thing we’re offering everyone who has pre-ordered (or pre-orders in the next 33ish days) the book, as posted on my Facebook before the weekend:

When you pre-order (or if you have already pre-ordered) Still Just A Geek, you can get an early audio chapter of my book. All you do is go to this link, and fill out the form. Something something something then you get it like magic!

Okay, self-promo completed, as long as I have your attention, I wanted to share some stuff. I think most of you know that I’ve been narrating Still Just A Geek for audio two weeks. I’ve been given permission to add in occasional thoughts as they occur to me, and because I am working with my favorite director in the industry, who I trust implicitly, I can be as vulnerable as the material deserves and in places demands. I’m emotionally wrung out, and physically exhausted, so I know that I am leaving everything in the booth, putting everything I am capable of putting into this narration.

Still, we (the director and I) felt like the audiobook needed its own introduction, so I wrote one yesterday that I literally just now realized is kind of a good pitch for the audiobook, if someone is on the fence about it. Here it is:

Hey nerds! This introduction is specifically for this audiobook. There are a few things I want you to know before we get started that are obvious to readers, but not to listeners. The first half of this book is my 2004 memoir, Just A Geek. All the material in that book is from around 2000 to about 2004, when I was in my late twenties. The second half is essays and speeches I’ve written in the last handful of years. If I did this right, you will hopefully see how I grew and changed as a person, and as a writer.

I’ve heavily annotated and reflected on who I was and what I wrote in the early aughts. In the print version of this book, it’s very easy to see where almost-50 me is talking about the experiences of almost-30 me. In audio, I suspect it will present a challenge, at least at first. I’ve worked to lower my voice and clearly indicate when 2022 me is speaking, and not 2002 me. When I feel that isn’t clear enough, I’m just going to tell you that we’re going into footnotes.

I’ve worked with this director and this studio for over a decade, and this is unlike anything we have ever done together. Industry professionals tell me this is kind of a new thing for audio memoirs, and I wanted to offer a suggestion that may help ease you into the whole experience.

I suspect it will help if you imagine that we are sitting in a room together, and I am just telling you my story. I’m reading to you from the book I wrote 20 years ago, occasionally looking up to reflect on it. I’ve adopted a more conversational tone, then, for this narration than I do when I’m narrating someone else’s words. This is a conversation. It isn’t a performance.

I’m actually writing this introduction the day before I finish recording the book. I’ve been working on it for two weeks, saying most of it out loud for the first time in 20 years. It turns out that saying it all out loud woke up stuff in me that stayed asleep when I was writing it, and while I narrated it, I had additional thoughts I wanted to add, additional context or whatever which came up that wasn’t there until it was. You can identify this entirely free bonus content because it is usually preceeded by something like, “this is just for this edition” or “here’s something I’d forgotten until just now,” and so on. I make a joke a couple times about how I’m going to annotate the annotations in another 20 years, but it turns out I have already done that.

There are also a few footnotes from the print edition that I cut, because they really only work in print, and are almost entirely jokes that I don’t think you’re going to miss. But, you know, full disclosure and all that.

Finally, a content warning. I talk a lot about my traumatic childhood. I talk about experiencing abuse, neglect, and exploitation. A lot of that was incredibly hard for me to read, much more challenging than it was to write. I need you to know that this book gets raw, vulnerable, and intense in a few places. If any of that sounds like it could be difficult for you, I want you to know ahead of time, so you can be prepared.

We’re going to spend a little over 20 hours together, if you stick with me to the end. I want you to know how grateful I am that you are giving me so much of your time, that you are listening to my story. You’re going to hear about a son who just wanted to be seen and heard, from the father that he grew up to be; a father who will do his best to give that kid, that teenager, that struggling twenty-something the voice he never had. On behalf of every person I’ve been at every stage of my life, I want to say thank you, from all of us for listening.

I feel like the audiobook will be something special. At least, it will be to me, and if anyone else feels the same way, that makes me really happy.

7 March, 2022 Wil 22 Comments
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i wanna rock (rock)

I was playing Donkey Kong yesterday, listening to my 80s Arcade playlist, and I got this idea to write something that like ten people in the world would find amusing. Because I am one of those people, and my friend, Josh, who gave me a good note on the bit, is another, I’d like to say a special hello to the eight of you who also enjoy this the way we do.

*Extremely Patrick Bateman Voice*

Twisted Sister found international fame in 1984 with their album Stay Hungry, powered by the success of “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, which reached number 21 in the US. Some of the song’s popularity can be attributed to the ambiguity of what “it” was Dee Snyder would not take. Some critics claim it allowed a disaffected generation to claim the “it” for themselves, whatever “it” may be. Snyder spoke for them all, while simultaneously empowering their own voices.

But it is the album’s lesser-known single, “I Wanna Rock”, released in October of that year and only reaching number 68 on the Billboard Hot 100 that is the true anthem for the moment. “I Wanna Rock” asks nothing of the listener. It allows for even less. It declares, “I Wanna Rock, and I don’t care if you’re going to take it or not,” and in so doing, defines the entire decade.

*Ax Swinging Intensifies*

11 February, 2022 Wil 47 Comments
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May His Memory Be A Blessing

Late yesterday afternoon, I saw that Howard Hesseman passed away. I didn’t know him, but I worked with him once, and he was wonderful. It was in the 90s, when Anne and I were still dating, in a tiny movie a classmate of mine wrote, produced, directed, and starred in. We filmed it up in San Francisco. Howard and I played rival drag queens. Oh, how I wish I could find a photo of us. It was magnificent.

It was so long ago, I can’t recall much about the movie, but I loved the story and I loved getting to do full-on drag (in a Peg Bundy wig, 10 inch platform thigh-high boots, showing way too much flabby belly God it was glorious) and I loved the unvarnished grind of making an indie movie in the 90s. I’m pretty sure Howard and I were in the same scene at least once, but I can’t recall if our characters interacted at all. I don’t think they did.

I also remember that one day on the set, we were sitting in cast chairs, talking, and the subject of jazz came up. I confessed that my familiarity with jazz musicians was ten feet wide and half an inch deep, but

I enjoyed Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Chet Baker. He asked me if I had ever listened to Charles Mingus. I told him that I hadn’t hear OF him, much less heard him play music, so Howard walked to his car, which he’d driven up from Los Angeles, and came back with a cassette of Mingus Ah Um that I still have today.

“You will love listening to this while you burn through the 5 on your way back to LA,” he said.

I loved the image of burning through interstate, just setting it afire and letting it turn to ash behind you before it blew away, having served its (your) purpose. It was so much more romantic and rebellious than the reality of trudging through mile after mile of “are we there yet” and cattle yards during seven monotonous hours.

“How can I get this back to you?” I asked him.

“You won’t want to,” he said. “I’ll get another copy. Forget it.” I can still hear the glee and enthusiasm that was in his voice. He was giving me so much more than a cassette tape.

Anne, Nolan, and I listened to Mingus Ah Um on the way home, and Howard was right. We loved it. I still love it. And I have Howard Hesseman to thank for it.

Rest easy, Howard. Thank you for being kind to me and my future family. May your memory be a blessing to others, as it is to me.

31 January, 2022 Wil 22 Comments
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Let’s do a Flashback Friday

Yesterday, I blew it all up. All the websites I maintain on my server, including this one and Anne’s, blew up when I did … something.

I exhausted my knowledge, and I exhausted my patience searching forums and documentation to figure out what the hell I’d broken, and how to fix it.

So I asked my friend for help, and he saved my bacon. (He probably saved some of your bacon, too. I bet you never even knew your personal bacon was at risk; that’s how nefarious today’s bacon mafia is. THANKS OBAMA.)

While I was trying to solve it myself, I saw that my /public_html directory was a shitshow that needed massive attention. Imagine the directory is a room. In that room are shelves, and on those shelves are the books and drawers where website content lives. This room should be nice and neat, so it’s really easy to find what you need. When something is out of place, it’s super easy to see, because the rest of the room is so orderly.

Now take that imagined room, and replace it with a teenage boy’s bedroom at the end of the week. Into that room, I dumped like fifty bags of website bullshit with the intention of cleaning it all up …. someday.

So that was like ten years ago. I know. It’s so embarrassing. As soon as my buddy finished saving the aforementioned bacon, I went into this appalling mess, and cleaned it all up.

In that process, I came across some old images that made me smile.I’m going to be promoting Still Just A Geek soon (YOU CAN PRE-ORDER IT HERE AT A DISCOUNT PLEASE DO OKAY THANKS) and these images from the time Just A Geek was written are going to be relevant and fun to share during the promotion.

One of those images is a screenshot of my website from 2005, when I had done all of it on my own. The layout, the php includes, the PERL, the whole thing. It was a lot back then (it still is, at least to me) and I’m proud of what late 20s/early 30s Wil was able to accomplish.

This very website, in September 2005

It’s all so much easier today (yesterday’s blowing up notwithstanding) and I love that. I love that the distance between “I want a blog” and “I have a blog” is a few clicks. When I did this back in the early aughts, there were at least two HTML books and months of studying to understand gzip, ftp, chmod, mod_rewrite, and holy shit configuring an Apache webserver in 2001 between those two things. I’ve compared it to owning a classic car in the 70s. It wasn’t enough to keep it the fluids topped off; you needed to be some level of a mechanic to hold it all together. It was just part of the price of admission. It was a lot, but I don’t regret it for a second. I learned a lot then (which I’ve clearly forgotten) but I am so happy that some of us who did the heavy lifting back then decided to develop tools and methods that would make it so much easier for everyone who followed us.

Turns out that I was one of those people who was always under the hood then, and I’m one of the people who just want the damn thing to work, now. Thanks, me from the past!

28 January, 2022 Wil 23 Comments
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Happy 6th birthday to me.

I wrote this last year. Facebook showed it to me as one of those memory things about fifteen minutes ago, and I had this sudden realization that I quit drinking alcohol six years ago, yesterday. It used to be a thing that I thought of every day. Every day, I erased a number on the whiteboard and wrote down the new one. Then it was every week, every month or so, and now it’s a few times a year that I go “holy crap it’s been [some number that seemed unattainable six years ago] days! Go me!” As of this morning, it’s 2193 days without a drink (well, I had like a thimble of whisky when we were in Scotland at a distillery, on principle) and I am so grateful for the love and support of the people closest to me who helped me get and stay sober.

This thing that I wrote last year is about the why of it all, and how making the choice to stop drinking made it possible for me to take fundamental steps toward healing my pain and trauma. I feel like it’s worth revisiting today.

Yesterday, I marked the fifth sixth anniversary of my decision to quit drinking alcohol. It was the most consequential choice I have ever made in my life, and I am able to stand before you today only because I made it.

I was slowly and steadily killing myself with booze. I was getting drunk every night, because I couldn’t face the incredible pain and PTSD I had from my childhood, at the hands of my abusive father and manipulative mother.

It was unsustainable, and I knew it was unsustainable, but when you’re an addict, knowing something is unhealthy and choosing to do something about it are two very different things.

On January 8, 2016, I was out in the game room, watching TV and getting drunk as usual. I was trying to numb and soothe the pain I felt, while also deliberately hurting myself because at a fundamental level, I believed the lies the man who was my father told me about myself: I was worthless. I was unworthy of love. I was stupid. The things I loved and cared about were stupid. It did not matter if I lived or died. Nobody cared about me, anyway.

I knocked a bottle into the trash, realized I had to pee, and — so I wouldn’t disturb Anne — did not go into the bathroom, but instead walked out into the middle of my backyard and peed on the grass. I turned around, and there was Anne. I will never forget the look on her face, this mixture of sadness and real fear.

“I am so worried about you,” was all she had to say. I’d been feeling it for a long time, and I faced a stark choice that I had known I was going to face sooner or later.

“So am I.”

Roughly 12 hours later, I woke up with the headache (hangover) I always had. For the first time in years, I accepted that I brought it on myself, instead of blaming it on allergies or the wind.

I picked up my phone, and I called Chris Hardwick, my best friend, who had been sober for over a decade at that point.

“I need help,” I said. “I don’t think going to AA is for me, but I absolutely have a problem with alcohol and I need to stop drinking.”

He told me a lot of things, and we stayed on the call for hours. I realized that it was as simple and complicated as making a choice not to drink, one day or even one hour at a time. So I made the choice. HOLY SHIT was it hard. The first 45 days were a real struggle, but with the love and support of my wife and best friend, I got through it.

2016 … remember that year? Remember how bad things got? I was constantly making the joke about how I picked the wrong year to quit drinking, while I continued to make the choice to not drink.

Getting clean allowed (and forced) me to confront why I drank to excess so much. It turns out that being emotionally abused and neglected by both parents, then gaslit by my mother for my entire life had consequences for my emotional development and mental health.

I take responsibility for my choices. I made the choice to become a drunk. I own that.

But I know that, had the man who was my father loved me the way he loves my siblings, had my mother just once put my needs ahead of her own, the overwhelming pain and the black hole where paternal love should be would not have existed in my life.

I made a choice to fill that black hole with booze and self-destructive behavior. That sort of put a weak bandage over the psychic wound, but it never lasted more than a few hours or days before I was right back to believing all the lies that man planted in my head about myself, and feeling like I deserved all of it. If he wasn’t right, I thought, why didn’t my mother ever stand up for me? If he wasn’t right, how come nothing I ever did was good enough for him? I must be as worthless and contemptible as he made me believe I was. Anyone who says otherwise is just being fooled by me. I don’t really deserve any happiness, because I haven’t earned it. Anne’s just settling. She probably feels sorry for me.

All of that was just so much. It was so hard. It hurt, all the time. Because my mother made my success as an actor the most important thing in her life, I grew up believing that being the most successful actor in the world was the only way she’d be happy. And if that would make her happy, maybe it would prove to the man who was my father that I was worthy of his love. When I didn’t book jobs, I took it SO PERSONALLY. Didn’t those casting people know how important this was? This wasn’t just an acting role. This was the only chance I have to make my parents love me!

The thing is, I didn’t like it. I didn’t love acting and auditioning and attention like my mother did. It was never my dream. It was hers, and she sacrificed my childhood, and ultimately my relationship with her and her husband, in pursuit of it.

I didn’t jump straight to “get drunk all the time” as a coping mechanism. For years I tried to have conversations with my parents about how I felt, and every single time, I was dismissed for being ungrateful, overly dramatic, or just making things up. Every single time I tried to have a meaningful conversation about my feelings, I was met with an endless list of excuses, justifications, denials. They just refused to accept that my experiences were true or that my feelings were valid. When the man who was my father didn’t blow me off, he got mad at me, mocked me, humiliated me, made me afraid of him. I began to hope that he’d just blow me off, because it wasn’t as bad as the alternative.

It was so painful, and so frustrating, I just gave up and dove into as many bottles as I could find. And I was varying degrees of a mess, for years.

But then in 2016 I quit, and as my body began to heal from how much I’d abused it, my spirit began to heal, too. I found a room in my heart, and in that room was a small child, terrified and abused and unloved, and I opened my arms to him. I held him the way he should have been held by our parents, and I loved him the way he deserved to be loved: unconditionally. I promised him that I would protect him from them. They could never hurt him again.

I realized I had walked up to that door countless times over the years, and I had always chosen to walk right past it and into a bar, instead.

But because I had made the choice to stop drinking, to stop hiding from my pain, to stop self-medicating, I could see that door clearly now. I could hear that little boy weeping in there, as quietly as possible, because he was so afraid that someone was going to come in and hurt him. Without alcohol numbing me, I clearly saw that my mother had been lying to me, and maybe to herself, about who that man was to me. I realized that the man who was my father had been a bully to me my whole life. I accepted and owned that it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t do anything to cause it. It was not may fault. It was a choice he made, and while I will never know why, I knew what had happened to me. I knew my memories were real, and I hoped that, armed with this new certainty and confidence, I could have a heart-to-heart with my parents, and begin to heal these wounds. I sincerely believed this time would be different, because I was different. So I wrote to my parents, shared a lot of my feelings and fears, and finally told them, “I feel like my dad doesn’t love me.”

I know some of you are parents. What do you do when your child says that to you? What is your first instinct? Pick up the phone right away? Send a text right away? Somehow communicate to your child immediately that, no, they are wrong and they are not unloved, right? Well, if you’re my parents, you ignore me and go radio silent (for two months if you’re my mother, four months if you’re my father.) And then when you finally do acknowledge the email, you are incensed and offended. How dare I be so hateful and cruel and ungrateful! Nothing is more important than family! How could I say such hurtful things?! Why would I make all that up?

Well. There it was. I had changed. They had not. They will not. Ever.

So, I want to be clear: I take responsibility for the choice I made to become a full-time drunk. But I also hold my parents accountable for their choices, including the choice to ignore me for weeks when, after a lifetime of failed attempts to be seen and heard, I finally just confessed that I felt like my dad didn’t like me, much less love me. I can not imagine ignoring my child, who is clearly hurting, the way they ignored me. When I do the occasional bargaining part of grief, I always come back to the weeks of silence after I confessed that I, their eldest son, felt unloved by his father. I mean, who does that to their kid? After a lifetime drilling into his head that “nothing is more important than family”?

Their silence during those long weeks told me everything I needed to know, and my sobriety was severely tested for the first time. Everything I had always feared, everything I had been drinking to avoid, was right there, in my face. When they finally acknowledged me, and made it all about their feelings, I knew: this was never going to change. I mean, I’d known that for years, maybe for my whole life, but I still held out hope that, somehow, something would be different. I had known it, but I hadn’t accepted it, until that day.

During those weeks, I spent a lot of time on the phone with Chris, spent a lot of time with Anne, and filled a bunch of journals. But I didn’t make the choice to pick up a drink. I’d committed to taking better care of myself, so I could be the husband and father my family deserved. So I could find the happiness that I deserve.

Once I was clean, I had clarity, and so much time to do activities! I was able to clearly and honestly assess who I was, and why. I was able to love myself and care for myself in ways that I hadn’t before, because I sincerely believed I didn’t deserve it.

I will never forget this epiphany I had one day, while walking through our kitchen: If I was the person the man who was my father made me believe I was, there is no way a woman as amazing and special as Anne would choose to spend her life with me. Why this never occurred to me up to that point can be found under a pile of bottles.

Not having parents sucks. It hurts all the time. But it hurts less than what I had with those people, so I continue to make the choice to keep them out of my life.

After five six years, I don’t miss being drunk at all. It is not a coincidence that the last five six years have been the best five six years of my life, personally and professionally. In spite of everything 2020 took from us (and I know it’s taken far more from others than it took from me), I had the best year I’ve ever had in my career — and this is my career, being a host and a writer and audiobook narrator. This is what I want to do, and I still feel giddy when I take time to really own that I am finally following MY dream. It’s a shame I don’t have parents to share it with, but I have a pretty epic TNG family who celebrate everything I do with me.

I wondered how I would feel, crossing five six years without a drink off the calendar. I thought I’d feel celebratory, but honestly the thing I feel the most is gratitude and resolve. (Updating this a year after I wrote it to observe that I’ve gotten so used to not drinking that I didn’t even realize it had been six years until this morning. I just don’t think about it that often, and I’m so grateful that all of that behavior isn’t part of my life any more.)

I am grateful that I have the love and support of my wife and children. I am grateful that because I have so much privilege, this wasn’t as hard for me as it could have been. I am grateful that, every day, I can make a choice to not drink, and it’s entirely MY CHOICE.

Because I quit drinking, I had the clarity I needed to see WHY I was drinking, and I had the strength to confront it. It didn’t go the way I wanted or hoped, but instead of numbing that pain with booze, I have come to accept it, as painful as it is.

And even with that pain, my life is immeasurably better than it was, and for that I am immeasurably grateful.

Hi. I’m Wil, and it’s been five six years and one day since my last drink. Happy birthday to me.

10 January, 2022 Wil 57 Comments

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It's Storytime with Wil Wheaton


Every Wednesday, Wil narrates a new short fiction story. Available right here, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also available at Patreon.

Wil Wheaton’s Audiobooks

Still Just A Geek is available wherever you get your audiobooks.

My books Dancing Barefoot, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, and Dead Trees Give No Shelter, are all available, performed by me. You can listen to them for free, or download them, at wilwheaton.bandcamp.com.

Wil Wheaton’s Books

My New York Times bestselling memoir, Still Just A Geek is available wherever you get your books.


Visit Wil Wheaton Books dot Com for free stories, eBooks, and lots of other stuff I’ve created, including The Day After and Other Stories, and Hunter: A short, pay-what-you-want sci-fi story.

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