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My Keynote Address to the 2016 Mensa Annual Gathering

Posted on By Wil
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Seconds before I started my address.

This is a slightly edited copy of my prepared remarks for the Mensa Annual Gathering. These remarks are meant to be heard and performed, so some of the nuance may be lost in the text.

Mental Hopscotch
If I’m so smart, why is my brain so dumb?

When Mensa invited me to speak to you tonight, it was easy to say yes. Though I am not a member – and I’ll get to that in a minute – my son is. In fact, he took and passed the test when he was 16, the youngest in his group. Joining Mensa was something he’d wanted to do since he was in sixth grade, and because I am a loving and supportive father, I thought that I’d help him prepare. I was in GATE, then AP, then honors, then Starfleet, so I figured that I could be a useful resource for him … and holy shit was I wrong. It was a humbling moment for me, eleven years ago, when I discovered that not only did my son not need my help, but I was wholly unable to give it. Like, I’m a smart guy, but as far as I am concerned, the Mensa test may as well be administered in Aramaic to subjects who are blindfolded and underwater. On Europa.

What I remember from the practice tests I looked at and then quickly ran terrified away from was that they tested my ability to reason and extrapolate the solutions to problems both complex and relatively simple, often from incomplete information. I didn’t have too much trouble with that part of it, but it was the math that killed me, because even though I’ve tried over and over again since I was in third grade, when it comes to math, I am talking Malibu Stacy.

Still, I accepted this invitation to speak tonight because one of my fundamental rules for living a successful and happy life is: don’t be the smartest person in the room, its corollary is: if you look around and see that you are the smartest person in the room, find a new room. This is the only way you keep growing and challenging yourself to be the most interesting human you can be.

The thing about that is … well, when you’re literally put on a pedestal in front of that room? It’s … really fucking terrifying to stand here. What could I possibly tell a room full of people who are smarter than me? Something geeky? Okay, that’s … well … right. Something geeky. Talk about something geeky that’s going to be relevant to a massively diverse group of people who probably aren’t judging me, but I’ll just proceed as if they are because that’s how my stupid brain works.

Okay … something geeky … something geeky …

I’m a geek! Everything in my life is geeky!

It’s going to be okay, Wheaton. Just sit down, and write about what you know. (more…)

blog Photo Credit Tony Case on Flickr

Not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

Posted on By Wil

Doing the reboot check-in a little early this month, because I’m going to be too busy at the end of the month to do it then.

So last time, the big question was:

The real challenge this month, and the 54,000 dollar question is: is it worth it?

Objectively, yes. Yes, it’s worth it. I’ve stopped seeing the significant changes and rewards that were happening in the early months of making these major and fundamental adjustments to my life. That’s to be expected, and it’s important to stay focused on the positive benefits of the long term commitment, even when the short term rewards aren’t as substantial as they were as recently as 60 days ago.

Because I have the delightful bonus of living with mental illness, it’s an additional challenge for me to identify when my Depression is lying to me, and then separate the irrational lies and their related feelings from objective truths. This month, and probably going back into much of last month, my Depression has been a real dick. It’s been taking tiny, unimportant, insignificant things that really shouldn’t matter, and blowing them up into catastrophic things that are totally about me (even when they really aren’t). I’ve been having a super neat existential crisis as a result, and I’ve just now realized — like, literally at this moment (11:25 am on 22 June 2016) — that if I wasn’t taking care of myself with these reboot choices, I would be really messed up and in a very bad place. Having these seven things to focus on and work on has given me a positive way to feel empowered, because I’m doing something about feeling kind of stuck and frustrated.

So before I get into the specific things, let’s do this in a couple of broad strokes.

First, my physical health is great. I’m at my target weight, and I don’t have any chronic aches or pains. My diet is healthy, and even though I’ve definitely developed a whole thing for ice cream, it’s in moderation — in fact, everything in my life is in moderation — so it’s not a problem.

Second, my mental health isn’t as good as it could be, but thanks to the patience, kindness, and advice of some wonderful people in my life, I’ve been able to work through this most recent existential crisis, and while I’m not like, “feeling fine“, I’m getting there. There’s a lot to unpack, and it’s all pretty personal, so that’s about all I’m going to say about it for now.

Finally, since I started making these changes a little over six months ago, and especially since they’ve more or less become routine in the last six to eight weeks, I’ve stumbled into a lot of clarity about the fundamental reasons I was unhappy, frustrated, adrift, unfulfilled, and needing to make big changes to my life in the first place. That clarity has been valuable and super useful, and will ultimately lead me where I want to go … but at this moment, it’s uncovered a lot of pain and sadness that was being covered up by bad habits and all those things I decided to change. This is really, really good, even if the in the immediacy of the moment (exacerbated by depression) it’s making me uncomfortable. Again, it’s a lot of personal stuff, and I’m not going to go into it, but I bring it up because I suspect that someone who is at the same point in their personal reboot is feeling some of the same things, and because it was reassuring to me to know that it’s a normal and healthy part of the process, I’m sharing it.

Okay, so let’s look at the specifics and see how it’s going. (more…)

blog Detail: Frazetta's Sorcerer

The Magician’s Path

Posted on By Wil

 

I’m taking a little victory lap here, because I just finished the second draft on a short story that I’ve been mucking about with for a long time. It’s no long — just over 3800 words — and it’s called The Magician’s Path.

Here’s a little bit:

The Magician sat alone in his study, and practiced his magic. He conjured small creatures who existed briefly before vanishing in a burst of fragrant smoke. He extinguished the torches with the wave of one hand, then drove the darkness away with the other. His magic was passable, and he was quite good at it, but the Magician wanted to be a true Wizard, and to become a true Wizard, he needed an apprentice to train.

In those days, though, an apprentice could not be recruited or even sought out. In those days, an apprentice had to come to a magician of his own volition, and ask to be trained. It was through the training that the apprentice would become a magician, and the magician a Wizard.

The Magician spent many years perfecting his tricks, and understanding the ways of magic. When a young apprentice finally appeared at his door, the Magician would be ready.

The year was young, though winter was at its deepest and coldest when the boy arrived. He was very young, and though the Magician had waited so very long, he was not sure that one so young could be taught, that one so young would be willing to do the challenging and unrewarding work that went into mastering magics. He told the boy these things, but the boy pleaded with him. “I am very young, but I am honest and dedicated,” the boy said. “I will study and I will learn and I will work as hard as I must.”

My instinct as a blogger (I’ve been at this thing for over 15 years) is to publish the whole thing right now, because I like it, I’m excited about it, and I want to share it. But my instinct as a writer is to sit back on it for a little bit, get into the next thing, and then come back to this for one final pass before I release it.

It isn’t a lot, but it’s something where there wasn’t something before, and it’s something that I started and finished. I’m not gonna lie, Marge: I feel pretty good right now, and I haven’t felt pretty good in a long time.

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A ghost in daylight on a crowded street.

Posted on By Wil

“You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.” -WSB

I set these very high standards for myself, and constantly struggle to meet my own expectations. In one way, that’s good, because it keeps me motivated and prevents me from getting lazy or complacent. In another way, it makes it really hard for me to ever sit back and go, “Hey, I did a thing. Good for me.”

So looking back on the last week or so …

I’m not as productive as I need to be. I’m sleeping more, but not well. Nightmares are frustratingly common, even if I don’t clearly remember them when I wake up. Lots of snakes and floods. I have developed this generalized anxiety that’s sort of like a background hum in my life, and it’s getting so persistent, just ignoring the hum is starting to become a full-time thing. It’s exhausting. I am watching a lot of movies and TV, but I’m staying up really, really late and I’m not sure that’s particularly good for me. I’m reading every day, but not a whole lot.

I feel like I’m doing a lot of stuff, but I’m not getting anything done.

But I did make this dumb thing in gimp today, that is a thing where there wasn’t a thing before:

CroppedForever

I took the source picture at Hollywood Forever Cemetery when Anne and I went to see the premiere of Outcast (it’s great and you should watch it). I was goofing around in gimp and with some filters, and trial and error, ended up with that image. I think it’s neat, like something that would be on a record sleeve, or a 1960s movie poster. If any of you who are clever and creative want to make something with it, I’d love to see what it inspires you to create.

The Niven Jazz Collection at the Internet Archive is phenomenal, and it was my soundtrack while I worked on this thing.

Oh, I had this realization: I’m creatively starving. So I know what the source of my anxiety is, and I know why I feel unhappy and frustrated. Now I just have to figure out what the thing to do is. Part of that incessant background hum is knowing that I can do almost anything, if I just do the fucking work, so I don’t know where to start.

But I have an idea … of sorts. So that’s a start.