Wil Wheaton's Blog

I should probably edit this, but if I start down that path, I’ll futz with it until I decide to delete it all. So I’m publishing something that’s a little more rough than usual.

I am a slow writer. I write slowly. It takes me hours to settle on 500 words. I rarely feel finished, but I let a lot of things go so I can get to work on something else.

When I am only a writer, of the capital-W variety, this isn’t a problem. It takes as long as it takes. A lot of the time when I’m working, it looks like I’m not. My hourly rate is terrible as a result, even if my per-project rate is standard. But that’s how I do it.

There’s an ongoing joke in my life, built on the following premise: I have a wide open calendar for months at a time, endless time to schedule jobs and meetings and press if I need to. Without fail, after long months like this, an avalanche of job opportunities, pr asks, and other stuff that I file under Adulting will absolutely need to happen on the same day, at the same time. No, we can’t move it at all the only time we have is that time.

Being my own boss, producing and hosting my podcast, is supposed to change all of that. I’m supposed to be able to focus on the podcast, ten episodes at a time, do the other things for a week or so, and then start over with another ten episodes.

In theory, this is going to be great. In practice, I’m drowning in missed deadlines and urgent responsibilities while I finish building and learning how to use the machinery that will eventually automate (or at least make more efficient) a lot of my work process.

It’s so weird to be learning how to do so many things so late in my life. I have always had tremendous respect and admiration for Felicia Day, (who is not just my friend, but my North Star on how to do the thing I want to do without compromise) but I now know that I wasn’t appreciating or admiring her nearly enough all the years we did The Guild and Tabletop together. I should probably text her and tell her this.

Today is the first day in too long that I’ve had the time and the focus to sit at my desk, open up my blog, and fill it up with words. We recorded an episode of It’s Storytime this morning, leaving us with two to go before we take a little hiatus for the holidays. I was aware of how tired and overextended I am, as I stumbled over the first page several times, fumbling around to find the connection to the material that I discovered and made while I was preparing it.

Real quick context: I choose to experience my life as a series of seasons. I’ve written about it before, the difference between living in a season and doggedly charging toward a goal; A season of healthy habits is more lasting and easier for me to commit to than a decision to lose or gain X pounds, for example.

I have been in a season of healing for much longer than I thought I would be when I started. If you read or listened to Still Just A Geek, you know that when it was done, I didn’t have this sense of catharsis or closure. I certainly didn’t have profound and lasting healing. What I did have, though I didn’t realize it at the time, was a map of all the times and places that contributed to my CPTSD. Of course, that map came with nervous system dysregulation, panic attacks, night terrors, and all kinds of delightful mental health crises. I think I’ve talked about how I reached out to my Spacemom for help, and it was one of her assistants who introduced me to the woman who is now my EMDR therapist. We’ve been working together for … I think four years or so.

During our work together, I have experienced the meaningful and lasting healing that I hoped writing about my trauma would deliver. I hear it. I hear it right now and I hear how ludicrous that is. “Ah, yes, I presumed that reliving all of my trauma in public would magically heal it. Genius!”

The public part has been helpful to a significant number of people, or so I have been told a few thousand times, and that is a real blessing. I want to be a helper whenever I can, and somehow I knew that the only way I could be a helper to myself was to spend my season of healing in private.

There’s this thing that happens when I’m working on a story. Like clockwork, I will be somewhere between halfway and two-thirds through my draft, when I get this overwhelming urge to tell someone about it. Some of you are nodding along, right? The thing about that urge is that it is powered by the same creative energy and motivation I’m using to write the story, and if I give in to it, real close to all of the energy I need to finish leaks out. Every writer has a different reason for this, I understand. For me, I feel like it’s a shortcut to the satisfaction of sharing the idea without the risk of its execution not fully working. It’s an expression of the Marshmallow Test, and I fail it all the time.

I wasn’t going to risk my commitment to healing and recovery by talking about it. I’m still not, really; I feel like I’ve already said too much about it, but at least I feel like I’m far enough along in the process and I have experienced enough very real, significant, and meaningful moments of lasting healing to know that this isn’t going to derail any of that.

I’m tired. I have really been through it. There have been entire weeks where I have just felt terrible, while working on reprocessing something particularly painful, or fully seeing something for the very first time. By terrible coincidence as I was starting to feel safe and less vulnerable in my relationships, I was stunningly ghosted by a couple of longtime friends without explanation, just dismissed and forgotten like we never even knew each other. That was such a shock, it kicked me in the stomach so hard, the pain and the loss, the confusion and disappointment. It came up over and over again until very recently, when a lot of the work I’ve been doing came together and did its thing.

All of this, so intense and so hard and so worth it, while I was doing my best to get It’s Storytime off the ground, deal with the unceremonious and surprising ending of The Ready Room, without so much as a thank you from the network after hundreds of episodes. (I guess that’s how corporate does things, now? That sucks. I’m sorry to everyone who has to experience that.)

And then the election. It broke me. How this country could do that … I am still just astounded and sickened. But it broke me so much, my entire Creative Self retreated into some deep, dark, safe place that even I could not find. Honestly, I wanted to join it and stay there until he’s dead and gone. For all of us who have been hurt by people we trusted, for all of us who have ever felt unsafe in our homes, for all of us who have been relentlessly abused by a bully, every single fucking day of this demented wannabe tyrant is a thumb, jabbing into a deep bruise. It resurfaces trauma that we had forgotten about or buried or thought we had recovered from. If you know, you know and I am so sorry. I see you and your feelings are valid.

I still haven’t found my Creative Self. I’ve come across some of his abandoned camps, picked up some of his notes and used them the best I can, but he’s still not ready to come back out and risk the vulnerability he work demands.

But I have found a lot of other parts of myself, wounded parts that were terrorized, ignored, minimized, invalidated. I’ve found all of them and reparented them to the best of my ability, giving myself the dad I always deserved.

I have begun to wonder if my Creative Self isn’t really hiding, as much as it’s taking itself to a place where it is safe, and staying out of the way so I can more fully participate in my season of healing.

I don’t know that this makes sense to someone who doesn’t use the IFS therapy model, and I’m beginning to feel weird about all of this, so I should wrap this up before I decide to delete it.

Something I have struggled with for years is how much I love creating good art, how much I admire performing artists, and how much the performing arts mean to me, when I was forced into the arts against my will, and held prisoner there by my mother.

I have every reason and every right to despise acting and performing of any kind. I have every right to walk away from it forever and do anything else. The most traumatic moments of my life (and there have been a lot of traumatic moments) were all on sets I didn’t want to be on, that I was forced to be on. I have every right to put all that in a warehouse, lock the doors, and set it ablaze.

Even still, I think I was always going to be an artist of some kind. I believe, and my anecdotal experience supports, that artists do not choose art; Art chooses Artists. It’s something we have to do. It is put into us at the factory, come standard on this model.

I recently worked on camera for a friend. It was just a couple of days, but I loved every second of it, and I was sad when it was over. That’s so different from my whole life on set. No matter how great the set was (and a lot of them were really, really, great) I always had anxiety and fear that I was going to get in trouble. I was always afraid that I would fuck up and get yelled at, or that I would make a mistake and everyone would be mad at me. I guess this started when I was about 8, and persisted until … uh … a month ago.

I really do like being on the set, but I always wanted it to just be over as quickly as possible, so I could get out before someone yelled at me. (For the record, I was rarely yelled at, and at least one time I absolutely deserved it.) It’s one of the reasons I suck at auditions, and it’s one of the reasons I hadn’t been cast from an audition for well over a decade when I decided that I wasn’t going to put myself through that, anymore: every single character I read for would have this simmering rage behind it, because such a huge part of me resented, well, everything about everything that culminated in me being right here, right now, for this fucking audition where the director isn’t even watching me. Or it had this current of anxiety, of real fear that if they didn’t pick me, nobody would ever pick me. And if nobody ever picked me, I would never have a chance to make my dad love me.

Yeah, that’s not great for a wide variety of roles. It’s great for the serial killer on Criminal Minds, but not much else. Certainly not any of the roles I was called in for.

I’ve been wondering if there’s a way that I can heal all that pain and sadness, recover from all of that trauma, and clear it all away, so the only thing left in the room is me, and the Art. There is no sadness. There is no loss. No pain. No endless grappling with why wouldn’t you just let me be a kid? Why wouldn’t you let me be part of your family? Why did you abandon me as your son to make me into this?

None of that was present when I worked on this thing. None. At all. It was only joy. I only had fun. I felt safe and confident and secure and I knew in my whole body that this belonged to me. I was free and supported to make big choices, to take risks in rehearsal, to really have fun and deliver a performance that I hope will show up to the audience the way it did for us on the set.

It’s the first time in my life I have felt that way. Yes, even on Big Bang Theory, where everyone was amazing and kind and supportive, I was afraid that I would fuck up and get fired. I was constantly afraid of things that only existed in my head, ugly weeds grown from seeds my mom planted in me when I was seven, and resowed year after year after year.

I remember coming home after my first day and cautiously confiding in Anne that maybe I wasn’t going to entirely walk away from this forever like I thought. Maybe I can leave that door open, just a crack, and kinda look at it, from time to time.

I really believe that Art chose me. I don’t know why, and I don’t know that I would have chosen acting if I’d been supported rather than controlled and manipulated. But I do know that when I am in a cast, when I am preparing a role, when I am discovering moments in rehearsal, and when we are putting it all together on the set, on the stage, or in a sound booth, it just feels right. It’s a place where I fit. And if I’m going to choose to be there, I will make that choice for me, to make me happy or satisfied or even just healed. I won’t make that choice from a reactive place. It will come from a thoughtful, empowered place.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be cast in a movie again, or be asked to be part of a series. But I do know that if I am, whatever choice I make will be entirely mine.

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A couple nights ago, my sister sent me a picture of the gorgeous aurora over her house in the upper midwest, so I took a picture in my back yard and sent it to her, to share my own view of the phenomena:

We do this every time she can see the aurora. It’s never not funny to both of us. I really love and cherish my sister.

A couple hours went by, and I looked at Bluesky, where I saw that this particular aurora event was a straight up phenomenon that was really blowing the skies up all over the place. The photos people were posting from all over North America, as far south as New Mexico, were all breathtaking.

So I had a silly idea that resulted in some alt text that I am so obnoxiously proud of, not only did I repost my own post yesterday, explicitly for more than five people to see it, I wrote a whole damn blog post so I could post this:

ALT TEXT: An extremely real photograph of the Aurora Borealis, its gossamer shrouds of red and green blown by the solar wind across the skies above Los Angeles. Definitely not a fake if you were wondering. I mean why would anyone even fake something like that? Because he’s like jealous of everyone who gets to see it for real tonight? Pfft! That’s just silly. Go back to enjoying the very real picture of nature’s very real majesty that was just taken in the skies above Los Angeles. Oh and if you go outside to look for yourself you probably won’t see it because it was almost out of science energy and was kind of just vanishing. Good thing there’s a real picture of it from someone who really saw it, to remember it.

I had fun with that, and it made me laugh a lot. Everything is terrible (some things are getting better! He will die soon!) so it’s more important to me than ever that I make time and space to laugh and have fun. One of the ways I have always done that is by allowing myself to be easily amused and entertained.

You made it to the end of another week! Congratulations. I hope you get to spend your weekend with people who love you.

There is a massive winter storm barreling toward us right now, expected to arrive in the next 18 or so hours. Yesterday, it was unseasonably warm and stupidly beautiful. Today, it’s eerily calm, under grey skies. The air is so still, it carries the train whistles from all the way across the valley, and every lawnmower in town sounds like it’s next door. You walk outside, and everything just says, soon.1 Even the corvids and squirrels seem reluctant to come out of the trees, It never rains in Southern California, man. It pours.

This past weekend, though, it was great, and I was grateful for it.

Last Friday, Anne and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. We have both been so busy and overwhelmed for so long, we planned to skip our usual weekend getaway and just go out for a really fancy dinner, instead. So we went to Mozza in Hollywood, where I think Anne discovered that pasta can actually be wonderful and not what her husband struggles to assemble in our kitchen.

We had such a wonderful meal, and such a nice time out, on a Friday night like PEOPLE WHO GO OUT TO DO THINGS! And that would have been enough, but about two weeks ago, Anne said that she was really missing our usual weekend away, and how did I feel about using points to go somewhere close? I admitted that I, too, was feeling sad we weren’t going to have two days of absolutely nothing but Us. Funny how we both really wanted to do this together, but kept talking ourselves out of it because we’d agreed together that we would.

Anyway, she found a place, cashed in some points, and we spent the weekend up in Santa Barbara. It was nothing but long walks, petting dogs, eating incredible food, and prioritizing each other, our relationship, our friendship, and our marriage. Each of us truly is married to our best friend, and even after 26 years (30+ total), we still have all kinds of fun goofing off together. We have consistently done the hard work of being married and being a family, and that investment pays off at like fifty million percent all the time.

It’s just like … it’s such a blessing and so awesome to spend our lives together, and be mom and dad to our kids. We have worked really hard for a good life, and I’m grateful that I’ve worked so hard to heal my PTSD, so I can actually enjoy living it.

And now…

This week’s story dropped earlier today! It is Dissembling Light, by Kel Coleman. It originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue 385.

This is a magical story (meaning that Magic features prominently in the narrative) about a man who holds tremendous knowledge and skill in his heart, and the hopeful apprentice who comes to learn from him. It also makes me wonder what good is knowledge, if its holder doesn’t freely share it?

You can get It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton wherever you get your podcasts. Here’s some links to the more popular services:

Apple PodcastsPocketCastPandoraiHeartAmazonor grab the RSS directly from me right here. (Yo! Old school RSS subscribers, I see you and finger your .plan!)

You can also support the show on Patreon, where you’ll get the show with no ads, as well as some spiffy extras that all the cool kids are into these days.

Today, I recorded two episodes. One of the things we did is the most beautiful, heartbreaking, I-need-a-minute-to-compose-myself story I have read in a long, long time. I’m so excited for you to hear it. It’s also the source of the show’s first official blooper, where you will get to hear me use all my, uh, colorful metaphors in rather creative ways.

I would absolutely love to hear your feedback on the show, if you’re a listener. I feel like we’re doing good work, and putting good art into the world, but I have no idea what the audience thinks if I don’t ask, because we aren’t exactly in a theater together. Although, if I can figure out how to stage one of these stories, I’m into seeing what that would look and sound like. Maybe something cool is there, way off in the mysterious future.

Unfortunately, it’s not the soon we are all waiting for ︎

Oh shit. I just hit publish, so the email already went out, and I am not going to send another. I can’t believe I forgot to even mention that Lego revealed a whole lot about the Enterprise D set that drops later this month. Can you believe I forgot this? It’s been such a full and exciting day, this got eclipsed like Darth Cheney finally joining Kissinger at the War Criminal’s table on Tuesday.

I woke up to a flood of text messages from friends who all wanted to make sure I knew about it (I love my friends so much) but my favorite one said “new contact image for you just dropped” with this image attached

I am beside myself. I’m a minifig, you guys! And I am so so so so happy that they chose this version of Wesley, specifically. Way to go, buddy!

Okay, I now turn you over to me from about ten minutes ago:

I should have posted this yesterday. My bad! I’m working all week on a narration that I have wanted permission to do for years. YEARS. Every night I go to sleep super excited to get back to work, and every morning I wake up excited that I get to do this.

That said, it’s been hard work, and I’m exhausted. You’d never believe it was possible to get exhausted, I bet, sitting in a chair and reading all day. And you’d probably be right, if that’s all I was doing. In fact, I wouldn’t have believed it, myself, if I didn’t have firsthand experience. But it’s performance, if you’re doing it right, and performance takes energy. Four straight hours of performance is a lot of performance, it turns out.

To be clear: I love that I’m exhausted. It feels earned and it’s satisfying. It’s also, uh, exhausting. I am entirely out of mana at the end of the day, and I didn’t think reaching into hit points for my blog was the best idea.1

I don’t know when I can get into the details of this — I have such a story to tell about today’s work — but I hope it’s soon.

Oh! This is SUCH a good excuse to put in my subscribe thingy. If you don’t want to miss that post, or any other post, you can do that here:

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Nice.

If you follow my Instagram, you may recognize that I’m working in the same booth where I record It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton. Allow me to use THAT to now fulfill the promise of the blog title, and tell you that a new episode dropped yesterday.

This week’s story is The Odyssey Problem, by Chris Willrich, originally published in Clarkesworld Magazizne. Ohhhh it is so good. I’d love to hear what you think.

It’s Story Time With Wil Wheaton is available wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe now at

Apple PodcastsPocketCastSpotifyPandoraiHeartAmazonor grab the RSS directly from me right here.

You can also support the show on Patreon, where you’ll get the show with no ads, as well as some spiffy extras that all the cool kids are into these days.

Oh! Oh! Reminder that Corey, Jerry, and I are coming to a city near you2 with a 35mm print of Stand By Me. Tickets are available for three screenings:

December 5 at Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, New Jersey

December 4 at Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire.

December 6 at Lynn Memorial Auditorium in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Everything you need to know, including how to buy tickets and VIP packages is at stand by me live dot com

Hey, hasn’t it great to wake up yesterday and finally have the day you voted for? It feels good, doesn’t it?The beginning of his end is upon us, friends.

Actually, I can confirm this, as I just realized while proofing this post that I am currently dipping into hit points. ︎Offer valid if you live near Red Bank, NJ, Concord, NH, or Lynn, MA. Offer void in Iceland, for some stupid reason. ︎

And we’re back! My podcast, It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton, returns today with a spooky story to celebrate the spooky season.

This week, it’s The Dark House, by AC Wise.

A photographer’s obsession with an unsettled subject exposes two friends to a darkness that won’t be contained by frames…

It’s so good! I had a great time narrating it.

If you’re interested, take a look at my Patreon for a feed with no ads and a bunch of cool behind the scenes extras. If you subscribe before 5pm Pacific tomorrow, you can watch me do a live reading of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Oh! And starting today, you can get most of the Patreon stuff through your Apple account with Apple Subscriptions, if you prefer to do it that way.

I love that I get to do this, and it means more to me than you know that so many of y’all tune in and love it with me.

I’m around all day today, and I’ll be checking in here if anyone wants to talk about the show.

Good news, everyone! My podcast’s test season earlier this year was received with such enthusiasm, we immediately got to work on building the machinery that would power a full series. It took all summer, as I and my team applied what we learned we could do differently or better going forward. I only wanted to do all that work once, because I want to do this podcast for years to come. I think we nailed it, and I think I get to hand off everything but the narration to the rest of the team.

So I can so happily shout from the top of a mountain that It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton Returns October 29th with a spooky story for the spooky season! And that will kick off at least FORTY new episodes.

FORTY!

I am so excited, I made a video about it.

I’ve been reading submissions from Michael, our content editor, and reaching out to authors for permission to narrate their stories. Can I tell you how warm it makes me feel when they tell me they enjoy my work? How happy and grateful I feel when an author tells me they already listen to my audiobooks?1 Every single story I have read has been incredible for a different reason. I can’t hardly wait, as the Replacements said, to narrate them. I’m so grateful that I am getting to do what I love for my job. If you’re already subscribed to the podcast, please accept my warmest thanks; I wouldn’t get to do this without you.

One of the unexpected delights has been the Patreon. I did a couple of live AMA things there that were surprisingly fun, so we’re going to do that again, and more often. I’m hopeful that I can even do some author chats, where we can get to know the people who created these stories I’m reading to you. Last time I looked, there were 485 paid subscribers, and like 300 others who are checking us out. That blows me away and I’m so grateful for the support, I’m going to do a special, live, narration of a spooky story, chosen by Patreon, next week. If you’re interested in seeing that, there’s plenty of time to sign up.

A statistically significant number of people asked me if I would ever be on YouTube, but I never wanted this to be a video thing. For me as a performer, I can’t serve the words on the page and play to the audience on the other side of the camera. Imagine going to see someone do a reading in a theater, and they never once look up from the page. It’s weird, right?

But so many people wanted us to be on YouTube, we figured out a way that I think will solve that problem. I’ll introduce the episode on camera, and then the story will be an audiogram. Done and done. There’s no content at the channel right now, but as soon as there is, I’ll share the link.

Okay, one last thing: Yesterday, I remembered that I had done a narration of Ur Fascism for Radio Free Burrito about five years ago. I felt like it was a good time to resurface it, so I did. And if you want to listen to my favorite episode I have done of RFB so far, with a full production and music and the whole thing that I did entirely by myself, I’m so proud of The Cecil Hotel.

I’m supposed to say that you can subscribe to It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton wherever you get your podcasts, even if that particular link goes to Apple for stupid SEO reasons.

That’s all for now. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourselves, and take care of each other.

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And my EMDR therapy is really working, because I can finally find space to fully feel all the joy without being afraid that it isn’t real, or that I’m stupid for letting myself get my hopes up ︎

Next Thursday, October 23, I am speaking at the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center’s 55th Anniversary Gala. We hope to raise some money to help them help our neighbors, and I’m going to share my story, which I hope inspires someone to take the first step on their own recovery journey.

We’re doing this at the magnificent Valley Relics Museum, and the event is open to the public. If you’re able to come to Van Nuys next week, I hope you’ll join us.

I’ve been reviewing some of my existing speeches, while I prepare this one, and I came across this part, near the closing of a speech I gave to the Southern Kentucky Book Festival in 2023. It’s one of those things that I say in some form every time I have the privilege of speaking to people who are trusting me with their time and attention, especially when there are younger generations in the audience.

One last thing, before I finish. I want to speak directly to any young people who are here:  This is your world, we’re just borrowing it for a little bit while you decide what to do with it. We’ve left you a real big mess to clean up, and I’m sorry about that. Believe me, a lot of us tried — and are trying — to make it easier for you, but we haven’t done enough.

I talked a bit about how afraid I was as a kid, how I felt like I was constantly on the verge of getting in trouble. One of the things I got yelled at about was doing something “on purpose,” so that’s a pair of words that have always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. For a few years now, I have taken the concept of “on purpose” and made it literal. I want to share with you some things I do “on purpose”, to literally give my life purpose and meaning, to help guide me when the path is unclear.

I’m a reasonably successful person. I don’t mean in my work, or only in my work. I mean in my life. I have great friends, I am so close to my adult children. I am married to my best friend. I get to do cool things, and I’m happy a lot more often than not. A real big part of that is committing to these choices:

Establish and protect your boundaries. You do not owe anyone anything. If someone does not respect your boundaries, it’s all the red flags.Choose to be honest. I’m 50, and I’ve learned that the only currency that really matters in this world is the truth.Choose to be honorable. This dovetails with number one. You attract to yourself what you put into the world. Dishonorable people will take everything from you and leave you with nothing. Do your best to be a person they aren’t attracted to.Choose to work hard. Everything worth doing is hard. Do the hard work that sustains and nourishes relationships, that gets you the most out of your education, that gets you closer to your goals. Sooner or later, you’re going to run into something in your life that’s really hard, and you’ll want to give up, but it’s something you care so much about, you’ll do whatever you can to achieve it. It’s going to be hard, but it’s going to be less hard for someone who has practiced doing the hard things all along, than it is for someone who doesn’t know how to do the hard work because they’ve always chosen the easy path.Always do your best, and know that your best will vary. Monday’s best may not be close to Tuesday’s best, and Wednesdays best may eclipse them both. Even if you don’t get the result you wanted, doing your best is really all you can ever do. We tell athletes to leave it all on the field. Whatever your version of that is, do it. And if you notice later that maybe you kinda phoned some of it in? Do your best to be gentle with yourself. We’re constantly learning and growing.The last one is the most important one. If only one thing sticks, I hope this is it. This is the one I hope you’ll share with your peers: Always choose to be kind.

And just to be clear: Nice and Kind are not the same thing. Nice is about manners, and it comes from here. [I point to my head] Kind is about empathy, and it comes from here [I point to my heart]. Cruel people can be nice, but they will never be kind. Please, practice kindness.

I always come back to these choices, because they are the ones that always make a difference for me. I’m working on adding a reminder that courage is not the absence of fear; it’s when you something you know is right, even though you are afraid.

We’re going to see a lot of courage tomorrow, that’s for sure … and it’s making the right people very, very uncomfortable.

I appreciate you. Thanks for reading. If you’d like to get my posts in your e-mail, you can use this thing:

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Grace Helbig is returning to YouTube. She made a video about it, and said something that resonated with me: we start out doing something because it is fun, and we keep doing it because we enjoy how fun it is. If we’re lucky, the thing we are doing for fun also helps us earn a living.

And then, when we aren’t paying attention, the thing that was fun is now work, and we are stressed as fuck about views and likes and reshares and oh my god this isn’t fun at all. Now, we are burned out.

Go watch Grace talk about this, if what I just told you seems interesting to you; she says a lot of insightful things that are worth hearing. I’m inspired, and want to make videos just like she does, if I can figure out some linux video editing software tools. But even if I can’t do video, I just want to get back to what it felt like when it was only fun, and I didn’t let all the other stuff get in the way.

I mention this because I only write in my blog for fun, and when I make it more important than just having fun, I really get in my own way. Yeah, I announce the cool things that I get to do, the cons I’m attending, I share my work and my podcast, and things that are work-adjacent, but if it isn’t fun to sit here and write about something, I just don’t do it. I won’t even go into how frustrating it is when I feel like I have to force it.

And I forget, every single time, how much I enjoy posting in my blog, how much I enjoy interacting with anyone who reads it in comments, how good it feels to make the human connections that, ironically, don’t seem to happen on social media, on account of all the bots and trolls and endless efforts to disrupt our peace.

So, hi. I’m glad you’re here. I hope we can interact in the comments and feel a sense of shared humanity and community.

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And now, a few things that have been on my mind, but not enough to fill up their own posts. I’m putting it behind a jump, because this got kind of long.

Since we are thinking about community …

LAist did a story about friendly local game shops. They talked to Donna Ricci, my friend who owns Geeky Teas & Games in Burbank, which happens to be both my favorite and my local game shop, and Jeff Eyeser, from Revenge Of in Eagle Rock (or maybe it’s Glassell Park, or Atwater Village. I’m unsure how the neighborhood boundaries work over there, but I’m sure someone will correct me). They both talked about not just building community, but nurturing and protecting it.

“We honor everyone who walks through our doors — except mean people,” Ricci said. “They can f**k off.”

I love this energy. Everyone should have this energy. Imagine how great it would be if every business (if every human) adopted this policy.

If you follow me on Bluesky, you know that something happened to me yesterday or maybe overnight while I was asleep, that seems to have flipped a switch inside of me that I have wanted to flip for literal decades: Some part of my brain insisted that I listen to the original cast recording of Cabaret. This is really weird. All I know about Cabaret is that Joel Gray and Liza Minelli are in it, and it’s painfully relevant to current events. That’s it. I have heard the “Welcome to the Cabaret” song a few times, but nothing else from the show.

I’ve never seen Cabaret, but from the moment I woke up, my brain DEMANDED that I listen to the original cast recording. I don’t even like musicals; I’ve lamented that I don’t have the gene, but holy shit this is so wonderful and I think maybe I got a mutation somehow and I get musicals?— Wil Wheaton (@wilwheaton.net) October 13, 2025 at 11:34 AM

You need this context to understand why this is a Thing for me: my whole life, I’ve wanted to like musical theater. So many of my friends have done musicals, are doing musicals, love to sing songs from musicals. And I just don’t get it. It’s like I don’t have the gene, or something? Everyone I knew growing up loved Grease. I just can’t stand it. Same with Phantom of the Opera and Cats. Oh my god do I hate Cats.

There were notable exceptions: Chicago, Les Miserables, Moulin Rouge. Rocky Horror Picture Show (which I didn’t even think of as a musical until yesterday, having categorized it as a cultural touchstone that is so much more than the sum of its parts) and Hamilton, of course.

But the classics? The ones that my elders adore? They’ve always left me cold. South Pacific and Oklahoma make my teeth itch.

Until yesterday. Yesterday morning, I listened to Cabaret three times in a row. Then I listened to The Music Man (oh my god Robert Preston where have you been all my life?), then I had to turn it off and listen to Joy Division so I could work without being distracted.

I don’t know if it’s a phase, but something is different in me today than it has been for my whole life. I still don’t like the musicals I don’t like, but I’m extremely open to discovering everything I’ve missed. I got tons of recommendations in my Bluesky mentions yesterday, but I’d love to hear yours, if you have any.

Let’s stay with music for a moment. I am late to the party, having only recently discovered The Warning, but better late than never. Three sisters from Monterrey, Mexico, who fell in love with music when they were kids, playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band. They formed a band that rocks so fucking hard, they will melt your face off. Listening to their albums put some of their contemporaries into my suggestions, and I am loving all the Mexican metal, largely driven by women, that is currently rocking my world. Start with Keep Me Fed, and you’ll know before the end of the first song if they are your jam. What are you listening to right now? Any new punk, metal, or hard rock you care to share?

I found this in my unpublished drafts folder with a note that says “this is overwrought and you should delete it” … but I didn’t. I feel VERY vulnerable sharing it, because it’s not my usual style, but this is now the third or fourth time I’ve thought about posting it, so clearly part of me feels it’s worth sharing.

This was drafted about five years ago:

Felt sad.

Felt scared.

Walked my dogs.

Went for a run.

Felt despair.

Had dinner with my family.

Held off a panic attack.

Took a walk with my wife.

Felt cynical.

Watched a movie.

Got through a day.

Cleaned my kitchen.

Did some work.

Felt hopeless.

Did some more work.

Had some meetings.

Felt angry.

Felt depressed.

Felt angry again.

Tried to sleep.

Did not sleep.

Finally slept.

Cleaned my office.

Felt numb.

Read a book.

Read some comics.

Felt okay.

Played some video games.

Got knocked down.

Got the fuck back up again.

To be able to create and share your creations without fear must be really wonderful. I have recently noticed that I’m not struggling with that the way I once did. Or, at least, not as intensely.

For almost ten years — Jesus Christ that’s a long time — I struggled like hell to understand why I never booked auditions. I asked trusted friends who I have worked with to please tell me what was wrong with me. Surely they must know, and surely they would be honest with me about why I stink, how they are able to wash the stink off when I work for them. Why does everyone tell me that I’m not just a good actor, but one of the better ones, and still I never book auditions? If I get feedback at all (and before I hung it up, I hadn’t gotten feedback for so long I don’t remember when the last time casting made the effort) it’s always positive. “You were great, but blah blah was cast.”

As the adult version of a child who was constantly told he had to earn his father’s attention and affection, but never told how to do that (ps – no child should have to earn love and attention), every audition was triggering. That’s why I quit. As much as I love being in a cast, as much as I love how good it feels to nail a performance, the industry has been loud and clear: Hollywood is not interested in me, hasn’t been for a long time, and if I keep chasing, that’s on me. I thought, “It’s weird that I can do this thing, and do it well, when I’m on the set, but never in auditions. What’s that all about?” Well, it turns out to have a lot of parts, but the bottom line is that actors who book jobs roll into the room with this confidence and commitment to the character that silently and instantly communicates to the room “Listen, you can cast me or not, but this is the best take on the character you’re going to see.” Because I was forced into acting by my mother, and then kept in it through her manipulation and exploitation of my desperate need to feel accepted in my home and family, I rolled in there with an underlying desperation: “please choose me so I have a chance at being loved by my parents. This is everything to me and I will do whatever it takes to make you happy.” I mean, it doesn’t matter how solid the performance is, how technically brilliant I am, whatever you want to call it, when there is a desperation that I’m not even aware of, underneath it all.

I’m genuinely and sincerely envious of actors who love the art, who come alive when they are performing, who don’t care if casting likes them or not, who get to feel in their souls what it means to be part of the community of performing artists. I have been close to that, I have felt it on occasion, but until this year, I didn’t realize that there was so much trauma and pain in between all of it, and me. I have wondered if I could try to do … something, probably theater, to find out if all of my trauma recovery work, which has been so intensely helpful in so many ways, has created space for me to love it the way I wish I could.

Earlier this year, I was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by AMDA. I didn’t say anything about it in public because I felt a little embarrassed. I’m only 53, so lifetime anything feels premature, but also … like … how can you give an acting and performance award to someone who can’t book an audition? Who, when you really get down to it, was just lucky to be in a few really, really good and memorable pieces of art? Sure, sure, I showed up and did the work, but it wasn’t just me. It was everyone involved in production. Nobody gets anything done on their own; everyone needs help to do any of this, and singling out one of us always feels weird.

I wanted to decline the award, but a couple of people who are close to me encouraged me to accept it, if only because it would give me an opportunity to speak to some kids about making great art.

I can’t find a local copy of the remarks I wrote for the event, so here’s a video of the entire talk (if you have time and interest, and a love of the arts, you may get something out of it). If you want to skip to my prepared remarks, they start right around 51 minutes.

Before I go, I need to clarify that the title of this post comes from The Dead Boys, not Paramore, and not Guns and Roses. Okay, I think that’s all for today. I’m glad you’re here. Take care of yourselves, and take care of each other.

One of the privileges I enjoy in my life is the opportunity to speak openly and honestly about my mental health struggles, challenges, and successes. I get to be the person I need in the world, and I get to pay forward the kindness and support so many people gave me while I was in the early years of recovery and scared to death that I would suffer night terrors, panic attacks, and uncontrollable anxiety for the rest of my life.

A combination of medication, EMDR and IFS therapy, and the love and support of my close friends and family all came together to save my life (literally) and help me find a way into a life that is fulfilling and joyful more often than it is not.

I am not suggesting that there’s nothing tricky about it, it’s just a little trick1. What I am saying is, access to medical care — physical and mental — is a human right, and in the richest country in the world, it should be freely accessible to everyone.

Until then, I am honored and grateful to lend my voice and my support to the organizations who work tirelessly to provide that care at low or no cost, organizations that are so important and always underfunded.

One of those organizations is right here in my backyard, and on October 23, I am speaking at the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center’s 55th Anniversary Gala. We hope to raise some money to help them help our neighbors, and I’m going to share my story, which I hope inspires someone to take the first step on their own recovery journey.

We’re doing this at the magnificent Valley Relics Museum, and the event is open to the public. If you’re able to come to Van Nuys later this month, I hope you’ll join us.

That would be the Brad Jacobs … something or other. ︎

Seriously. Fuck these fascists. Join a No Kings protest on October 18 and stand up for our rights and our democracy.