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In loving memory of Seamus Wheaton, the best dog.

Posted on By Wil

Yesterday afternoon, Seamus collapsed on our living room floor. We took him to the emergency vet, where they ran some tests, and discovered a large mass on his spleen. He had a 105 fever, and he wasn’t responsive. The doctor told us he was in critical condition.

At almost 12 years-old, Seamus wasn’t a candidate for surgery (and we weren’t going to put him through that, anyway), so at midnight last night, we said goodbye to the best boy in the world.

I know that a lot of you care about our pets, because we post lots of pictures of them and talk about them all the time. You know how much we love them, and you know how much you love your pets, so you know how much this loss hurts all of us.

This overwhelming pain I feel right now is the price we know we’re going to pay for the years we have with our four-legged family memebers. We’ve always known the day would come when he wouldn’t be in our lives, but that didn’t make the arrival of that day any easier.

I’m so grateful we got to be with him in his final moments, and we got to tell him goodbye. We got to thank him for all the joy and love he brought into our lives. We got to kiss him and hug him, and he passed peacefully, with the two people who loved him more than anything by his side.

Seamus was a special dog. At doggy daycare, they used him to evaluate new dogs, because they knew what a good citizen he was. I was always like a proud parent about that. He was a fantastic pack leader for Marlowe. He taught her how to be a dog, and he lives on in her, a little bit.

I’m going to miss him so much. I keep automatically looking for him in all of his places around the house. I know the next few weeks are going to be tough. Eventually, all that will be left is the memory of the joy and love he gave us.

But right now, today, it hurts so much. I miss his grey face so much, and I want to kiss the spot on his big old blockhead one more time.

He was such a wonderful dog, and such a blessing to have in our family. I love him, and I will miss him forever.

Bye bye, Seamus. You were the best boy, and your whole pack loves you. If heaven exists, and dogs go there, I hope you’re playing ball with Riley and Ferris.

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Thirty-three years of TNG

Posted on By Wil

A couple of days ago, in 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered.

I am one year older today than Patrick Stewart was when we filmed Encounter At Farpoint. I literally grew up on the Enterprise.

It’s been a long and complicated journey to get from 14 to 48. It’s been joyful and painful, and all of it has happened on the shoulders (and occasionally in the shadow) of this television show that is so much more than a television show.

I am so proud and so grateful to be part of Star Trek. I love my Star Trek family so much; they are the closest thing to parents I have in my life, and I am so grateful for them.

I am so lucky to be part of something that will likely endure for generations, inspiring kids whose parents haven’t even met, yet, to do great things with their lives.

I wish I’d been able to fully appreciate it when I was there, but I just couldn’t. I was young, immature, and in so much emotional pain, all the time, it kind of overwhelmed everything else in my life. Luckily, I was able to appreciate it from time to time, and because of that, I have some of my most joyful memories as a kid, and as an actor.

I met Anne because of Star Trek. I was on a Trek cruise when I was 18, and met my friend Stephanie, who was also on the ship, but not part of the Star Trek group. We became friends (still are, she was in our wedding), and years later, she introduced me to her friend from work.
I owe every bit of happiness I have in my life to Star Trek, and when I think about that, it kind of blows my mind.

Happy birthday, Next Generation. Happy birthday, to my space family. I love you.

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報復性熬夜

Posted on By Wil

I feel like I’m always the last person to learn about something, and that makes me reluctant to share things that now seem obvious to me. But I feel like a lot of y’all who read this page are similar to me in some ways, and maybe you’ll be glad to know about this, if you don’t already.

I saw a post on Tumblr about something called “revenge bedtime procrastination”. The original term in in a non-English language that I don’t speak or write, but that’s the closest we can get to a literal translation.

Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, which has a much more beautiful name in Chinese (the literal translation for revenge bedtime procrastination means “suffering through the night vengefully.”), is a phenomena unique to people who feel out of control in their daily lives, so we refuse to go to sleep early, to exert some control over our lives, and to enjoy some quiet time alone, when the rest of our people are sleeping.

I’ve always identified as a night owl. I’ve always had trouble falling asleep, and as long as I can remember, I prefer to sleep from about 0100 to about 0930 or 1000. I’ve been like that my whole life, and until I heard about this sleep revenge procrastination, I didn’t know why.

But now it all makes sense. When I was a kid, I lived in an environment where I was decidedly not in control, nor did I feel safe and loved. The man who was my father was a relentless bully who delighted in mocking me, teasing me, making me cry, as he made it crystal clear that he did not approve of, or love me. He made it very clear that I was not enough for him, through direct and indirect actions that have left me with a deeply painful wound that I don’t know will ever heal. Now, I know he had love to give, because he gave it freely to my siblings. He worshiped my brother, who grew up to be exactly like him, and I never saw him be cruel, dismissive, or disdainful toward my sister. It was just me, for some reason. And my mother did nothing to protect me, or to call out his emotionally abusive behavior. He was endlessly cruel and emotionally abusive to me, but they convinced themselves that, because he didn’t leave marks when he grabbed me in anger, he wasn’t actually, you know, abusive. Angrily shaking me by my shoulders, jabbing me in the sternum while he raged at me, calling me names like “dumb little fuck” all seems like abuse to me. They say I’m too sensitive. More than once, they told me I made it up.

News flash: the man who was my father was abusive to me, and my mother let it happen. Worse, she gaslighted me about it when I came to her for help.

So my waking hours in my childhood home just sucked. When I was a child, I’d retreat into my bedroom and read books, design D&D characters and dungeons, and escape into my imagination, but there was always the threat of that man walking in and mocking me for existing.

As a result, I developed this Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, which gave me truly free and quiet moments of relief from his cruelty and her manipulation, when they were asleep and I was the only person who was awake in the house. That’s when I could write, when I could read books, when I could listen to music, when I could exist as a human being who wasn’t always afraid.

Today, I love my life and my family. I couldn’t be happier about my career. I mean, right now things are generally not great for all of us, and I’m ready for our current trauma to be over, but if the dual traumas of pandemic and Fascism were removed, my life would be really great, in no small part because I have no relationship with my abusers.

And yet, I still struggle to fall asleep before 0100, even with the help of my CBD tinctures and meditation. It’s something I’ve lived with my whole life, and something I never truly understood, until I read this post I referenced above.

I don’t know if, now that I know this is a thing, I can start working to convince myself I don’t need that time like I did then, because I am in a house filled with love, shared with a partner who won’t ever hurt me. I don’t know if I’m going to ever be a person who can fall asleep easily, or before the middle of the night, but at least I know WHY I am the way that I am, and that makes me feel a little less broken and weird.

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just thinking

Posted on By Wil

I’m thinking about kids who are doing online learning, when they want to be at school with their peers. I’m thinking about their parents who are suddenly thrust into an educator role they may not want or feel prepared for. I’m thinking about good, honest, hardworking people who are in danger of losing their homes through no fault of their own, desperate for some protection from predatory lenders and landlords. I’m thinking about the people who are getting up and going to work every day, for corporations who don’t care if they live or die, so the rest of us can have food and other essentials. I’m thinking of the people who did everything right, and still got sick because a selfish person refused to take this pandemic seriously. I’m thinking of the nearly 200,000 people who have died and the loved ones who are mourning their loss. I’m thinking of the BIPoC who are living through the dual traumas of being BIPoC in America in 2020, and living through a pandemic that affects people who look like them more harshly than it affects people who look like me. I’m thinking about teachers and educators who don’t want to be in classrooms because of the pandemic, but who also want to be there for their kids. It’s going to be unimaginably difficult to keep kids safe (think of how hard it is to get us to sit still) and give them the best quality education these teachers can provide.

I’m thinking about all these things, and how overwhelming all of this is, for all of us. If it’s tough for me, I can’t comprehend how tough it is for someone without my privilege.

I know that my experience is substantially easier and less disruptive to my life than it is to almost everyone else, and maybe that allows me the space to be the person I need in the world right now. So I’m sharing the reminder and the advice I gave myself, earlier today, when I needed it.

  • Remember to look for the Helpers.
  • Remember to BE a Helper.
  • Remember that this is not forever.
  • Remember that, as terrible as everything is right now, we’ve been here before and come back from it. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to be as resilient and committed as our ancestors were in their day.
  • Remember that we are living through a major trauma unlike anything most of us have ever experienced in our lives. We haven’t done this before, so we are figuring it all out in real time. It’s hard and it’s scary, and we need to be as gentle with ourselves as we are with our kids and loved ones.

This stuff is helping me today. Maybe if you need it, it’ll be helpful to you, too.

Also, real quick before I hit publish: Teachers, I see you. I’m grateful for you and I love you.

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i’m writing a new book

Posted on By Wil

I can’t talk about what, specifically, I’m writing, but I am excited af to say that today, I began work on my next writing project.
It’ll be about a year or so before this project is finished and on shelves, but today, I got into it for the first time.

The beginning is always a slog. I have to just puke up whatever is in my brain, so I can put down a foundation and some framing. I’m doing work that likely won’t be seen by anyone other than my editor, but it’s still vital to the process.

This particular beginning isn’t as tough as I was expecting, which is a blessing. Every book, every essay, every speech, all have their own process, their own discovery, their own expression of my creative self. Each one is different, and each one takes some time to tell me how it’s going to be written. This thing seems to be easier and more fluid than I expected it would be, and the words came very easily this morning.

I expect that I’m going to rewrite and reject a lot of what I’m doing today, but HOLY SHIT does it feel good to be doing it. I haven’t been a capital-w Writer for a long, long time, and though the Writer Outfit is a little wrinkled and musty, it still fits.