Yesterday, my narration of The Body by Stephen King (the novella that was adapted into Stand By Me) was released. I have wanted to do this for years, and I can’t believe I never wrote about it here. I’ll address that in the future, because it’s a cool story. Simon and Schuster, the publisher, has been super supportive and enthusiastic about this release. They gave me a whole chapter to share, and it’s at the end of this week’s¹ It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Today, I am the subject of a truly wonderful column in the New York Times that includes interactive clips from my narration, scenes from Stand By Me, and the text of the novella. It’s a beautiful piece that genuinely surprised and delighted me. And it comes just a few days after we were the subject of this incredible essay, also in the New York Times, about our Stand By Me Live tour².

Tonight, Jerry and Corey and I are together on Entertainment Tonight³ to talk about the movie’s theatrical re-release, which starts on Friday.

I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to your inbox, here’s the thingy:

1. I had to take last week off, so we are replaying one of my favorite performances, End of Play. ︎
2. This weekend, we are in Anaheim Friday, Seattle on Saturday (see you at No Kings, Seattle), and Portland on Sunday. Tickets are still available for all three shows. ︎
3. In Los Angeles, that’s 7:30pm on CBS, check your local listing to be sure. ︎

This fits into my efforts to slow down and be more present. It’s creating space I desperately need to decompress, get bored, let my mind wander and come back with a fun and creative idea.

Today, I was out for a minute and saw this little art installation on a telephone pole. It was weathered quite a bit; it’s been here for awhile. And it was beautiful to me. It was a few moments better spent than they would have been looking at anything on my phone, or anything I could have been listening to. It wasn’t dysregulating, it didn’t increase my internal DEFCON level.

I chose to experience and appreciate this thing that someone made when they were very much not thinking about me, because it was exactly where I needed it to be, exactly when I needed it.

I took some pictures (using only the camera and nothing else on the phone) so I could remember the moment, and share the art. They’re pretty big, so I’m gonna put them behind a jump.

Art is so important, y’all. Make time to experience it. Allow it to inspire, comfort, and challenge you.

I love public art, and I love the artists who create and install it. Please support your local arts community.

I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to get my posts in your email, here’s the thingy:

Florida deserves the jokes we make about it, but my experience when I was there was quite lovely. Every person I interacted with was kind, friendly, helpful. I had an incredible piece of blackened gulf red snapper for dinner one night, my bed was comfy, and I did not have a single awkward or uncomfortable encounter with anyone at the show.

None of that is why this will be one of the most memorable conventions of my life, and I will now tell you why.

Holy. Shit.

I turned to my friend, Leah, who works with me at conventions to keep things running smoothly. “Dude, I have to come do this tomorrow.”

“Okay, we’ll take care of it,” she said.

So Saturday comes around, and I’m signing autographs at my table. Leah taps me on the shoulder and says, “it’s time to go downstairs.”

The excitement that surged inside of me threatened to explode out of my chest like Alien. I told the people who were in the line that I would be right back, I was going to fulfill a childhood dream.

We went downstairs to the photo-op area, and I apologized to the line I was cutting. They seemed to understand, my fellow fans of CHiPs, who also could not believe this was actually happening.

I bounced on the balls of my feet while I waited, and oh shit here comes Larry Wilcox. And he’s wearing a CHP uniform shirt with a name tag that says JOHN! I tried so hard to control my bouncing, but I’m pretty sure I failed.

We made eye contact and I said, “Hi, I’m Wil. I’m a huge fan and I am so excited to take a picture with you.”

“It’s so nice to meet you, I’m Larry.” We shook hands, and I didn’t keep shaking it like I did when I met Henry Rollins thank god.

There was a commotion around the corner, which could only mean one thing. Here comes Erik Estrada, much taller than I expected, and he is wearing a uniform shirt with a name tag that says PONCH.

Dude, it’s totally Ponch. Like, right there, right in front of me, are Ponch and John and I’m so excited I can’t tell if I’m going to burst into tears or throw up or what.

They take their positions on their marks, which are the same marks I had been using just a little bit earlier, and the photographer tells me that they are ready.

This is my chance. This is the one time I get to say this. I take a deep breath, and I say, “I don’t want to take up a ton of your time, so I’ll say this quickly. I grew up in Sunland-Tujunga, and you guys used to film in my neighborhood all the time.”

They looked at each other. “Sunland-Tujunga!” Larry Wilcox said. “We love Sunland-Tujunga!”

“Yeah, it was a great place to grow up. So I loved watching CHiPs, and I loved that I could see streets I recognized when I watched it.

“One day when you were filming, in like 1979, I think, my babysitter went to the set and came back with your autographs for me. I cherished them, until they were lost in a move probably 40 years ago.”

Erik Estrada’s eyes lit up and he flashed me that classic Ponch smile. I took a steadying breath.

“But this is really what I wanted to tell you: I had a rough childhood, with a lot of abuse an exploitation. I was sad and scared most of the time. But whenever you were on my TV, I was happy and I was safe. I loved CHiPs so much. You were the adults I wished I’d had in my life. You guys protected people, you stood up to bullies, and the whole cast felt like a group of people who were always there for each other. I desperately wanted that in my life, and watching CHiPs got me as close to it as I could get. So I really just want to say thank you for your work and for the joyful memories you gave me.”

“Oh, buddy,” Erick Estrada said, “thank you. Come here,” and he pulled me into a warm and loving hug.

“Thank you,” I said, “you have no idea.”

“I think maybe we do,” Larry Wilcox said, very kindly, with a warm smile. Maybe I’m not the first person to share a story like mine with them.

“Let’s take a great picture,” Erik Estrada said.

“Thank you. I’d love that,” I said.

I stood between them, they put their arms around me, and a dream came true for 9 year-old Wil.

They were such kind men. I felt seen and I felt special. All these years later, Ponch and John can still make this weird, sad, scared, little kid feel safe.

I will cherish this memory for the rest of my life.

I’m glad you’re here, and I hope you’ll come back to read more. If you’d like to get my posts in your inbox, you know what to do.

I worked on this story for about eighteen months, even though I “only” spent about 12 hours actually writing it. It was a year late, even though it “only” took me three days to write the draft that I turned in. I have never worked harder or longer with fewer words to show for it at the end. But they are good words. I am so glad that I did this, that I put this at the top of my queue and left it there, even when I felt like I couldn’t put two words together, because when I accepted it, I made a promise to myself that I would do the thing,¹ and it was really important to me that I didn’t break that promise, even if it meant that the queue did not move at all, for a year.

I was so excited to do this when I accepted the invitation in late 2023 or early 2024. But the election broke me, and 2025 went from being a year I expected to be all about making not just this thing, but lots of things, to a year that forced me to turn off my engines, divert all power from all non-essential systems to life and mental health support, and run silent until further notice.²

Nearly every day in June and July, I woke up with my body completely dysregulated. It was its own alarm: the terror, the shaking, the nausea and sweating … all of that stuff I became an alcoholic to avoid before I went to sleep at night was now happening to me, ten years sober from alcohol, every fucking morning. And this was even worse than the other thing. Day after day, exhaustion and discomfort helped push my anxiety to record levels, worse than it had been in years. I felt like the ulcer my mom didn’t believe I had when I was a teenager was coming back. I was distracted all the time, constantly crashing into doorways and furniture, forgetting why I walked into every room. More than once, for days at a time, I felt like I didn’t even know myself.

I mean, it was a lot. And I say that as someone who has survived and healed from a lot, you dig me?

The dysregulation was a symptom, I knew that; but why it showed up when it did took a lot of work to uncover, probably because the cause turned out to be a lot of different things³ that ultimately revealed themselves to be a individual parts of a few things that I could look at and work on using EMDR therapy⁴.

EMDR therapy works so well for me, it is advanced technology that is indistinguishable from magic. But that magic isn’t a spell that cures everything and turns me into someone I’m never going to be. But it helps so much, and it heals so much, I literally feel pain and trauma leave my body⁵ and then over the next few days, I notice that space to enjoy the good things opens up. For months, now, I have been experiencing moments similar to the first time I heard the birds, as I notice that something which had been hurting for so long, I had gotten used to it, like the smell when you live next to the dump, was gone. And, just like I did then, I marveled that I was able to exist at all with the trauma taking up all that space.

The thing about my healing and recovery is that I can work my way through the level, get to one of those hideous Baron-Harknonen-meets-human-Bender-meets-a-gibbering-mass-of-eyeballs-and-teeth boss monsters, defeat it, and celebrate as I head to the next level … but there’s always another monster waiting behind some currently unopened door that I will have to eventually go through. So I celebrate the wins, but cautiously.

For the last year or so, in the exuberant haze of post-slaying celebration, I would sit at my desk, confident that The Thing was now going to begin filling the empty document. Most of the time, it was a frustrating, demoralizing experience as I dragged words, kicking and screaming, from my mind onto the page. At the end of those days, I’d curse myself and throw it all away. Once or twice, I enjoyed what I wrote, but when I went back to add to it, I realized there was a nice scene or two there, but nothing I could build into a story. Nothing I wrote made my heart sing. I never felt connected to what I had written. Maybe I’d put together one or two or even three nice scenes, but the reason I wanted to write it, the story I wanted to tell, I didn’t know what that was, because I was too distracted, too tired, too … broken.

I. Just. Could. Not. Do. It.

I’m gonna yadda yadda over a lot, because I want to hurry up and get to the fireworks factory. Maybe I’ll come back to it in the future. For now I will say I found myself in the middle of an empty ocean, floundering in the worst storm I’ve ever seen. I had all these instruments telling me how to get out of it, but I couldn’t adjust the sails to use them. I got frustrated, I got mad, I started to get depressed.

Yadda yadda, one day, as I was thrown wildly around by the violence of towering waves, it was like my body, or my Higher Self, or whomever is writing my life took pity on (or ran out of patience with) me and decided to do something about it. One day in late Autumn, it broke the glass and smashed a big red button which delivered this message: You will not be able to make good art, the one thing you want to do more than anything else for the rest of your life, until you slow down and let the healing take as long as it takes. We mean, really commit and do it. Yes, when it is hard. Yes, when it feels like you’re running in place on a patch of ice and if you fall it’s really going to hurt. Yes, when you are afraid. Yes when you are overwhelmed. Yes, yes, yes, you can do this. You must do this.

I heard that, paused, and I listened to what came after. I showed up and did the work. I started to slow down, but the way an overloaded cargo ship slows down over, starting several days out of port before it can think about actually slowing down again to dock without exploding like a Ford Pinto⁶

That brings us to sometime in January. I had been out of the storm and on dry land for a little bit, but I could still feel the motion of that storm, emotional landsickness from a body that didn’t realize the motion was a memory,⁷ but I also felt weirdly aware of how on solid ground I was, and that the discomfort was literally in my head. So I went for some walks, and as the landsickness calmed, all the years of reading books I didn’t feel had helped me at the time, books about storytelling, story structure, character development, writing process, books I read in an effort to get myself from a guy who writes things to a guy who is a writer, all came together at once, and before I realized it was happening, I think I got there. I think I am there, right now. Holy shit.

I have always known that I was mostly faking it, when it came to writing stories. I always felt like I had always had some grasp of the skills, but very little understanding of how to use them. I know that I’m reasonably competent and occasionally even good as a blogger who writes stories about his own life. I know that I can effectively recreate the emotional sense of a place and put you there. That’s not nothing! I’m proud of it and I love doing it! But when I tried to take that particular set of skills and translate them into writing stories of my own that actually say something through characters who grow and change in a story that evolves as I tell it rather than remember it, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t understand something fundamental about the discipline, and I didn’t even know where to look to find it. I think maybe it isn’t one single thing, and maybe it isn’t something that is meant to be easy or even logical in its discovery. At least, not for me. And I’m not even sure I’ve completely put it all together, just that I’ve figured out enough of it to finally get the key to turn in a door I’ve clawed grooves into, trying to brute force my way through it.

I started from the very beginning: What story do I want to tell, and why? A couple days of long, quiet walks later, I knew. It was simple and clear: I want to tell a dark fantasy story about a man who’s been running away from himself for so long, he doesn’t realize that he’s been caught, until it is too late. I want to examine where his greed comes from and why.

Where will I set it? Who is the guy? What happens after we meet him? Is there a twist? What is it? Who wins at the end? I allowed myself to write hundreds of words that didn’t work, knowing that they were getting me to the next hundred words that did, confident that I would be able to clean them up later⁸.

I had such a great time. I felt creative. I felt clever. I felt productive. I felt like I knew what I was doing! I wanted to reach out and tell my friend this was happening, but after blowing so many deadlines, I didn’t want to say anything unless and until it was done.

While I was busy not texting my friend, my friend texted me. They told me no pressure or expectation, they know what I’m dealing with, but there was a week left if I still wanted to turn in the thing. I replied that I would do my best, and mentioned that I’d been working on it, but didn’t go into the rest. I really wanted to stay on target, use The Force, blow this thing and go home.

Late in the day last Thursday, I finished the draft. I looked at it again Friday morning, was happy to discover that it held up, and turned it in with a note that said I thought this was about 90% done, but I needed fresh eyes to look at it, for those things I inevitably miss, or things that are left over from a previous draft that I didn’t notice were still there.

And I waited.

Yesterday, my friend texted me that he loved my story. Shortly after, the editor replied that he had no notes and was ready to publish it as-is. I asked if I could have a day to do a polish and just look it over one last time.

After my coffee and Marlowe’s walk this morning, I opened up my current draft and began reading it aloud. I made cosmetic tweaks here and there, tried out something in a scene that didn’t work so I deleted it all, and was sincerely shocked at how finished it actually was. It was more like 98% there, not 85% like I thought just 24 hours prior. I realized that I was having fun reading it, like it was something I hadn’t written, but was enjoying on its own merits.

That was wild, man.

So, after about 18 months, I “only” spent about twelve hours over “only” about four days working on the thing, but I think I spent roughly 540 days with this story, while it taught me how to be a writer.

What do you mean, Wil? I’ve been reading your blog for 20 years. Of course you’re a writer. Yes, I’ve written lots of things in 20ish years, but I always felt like I was mostly faking it. I could stack story blocks on top of each other, but if the stack got too tall, it always fell over. And even if I was in love with it before it fell, I didn’t know how to put those blocks back in order because I didn’t know why they went in that order, just that they fit together well, mostly by accident.

Something is different, now, and some other ideas that have been sitting on shelves in my creative mind, gathering dust, have begun to call out to me for the first time in years. Two things that I really loved developing but never finished are probably going to be combined into one thing, and I think I may even have a chance at pitching the result to a publisher.

I didn’t notice until today, editing this post, how much my growth as a trauma survivor and my growth as a writer have in common, even though I’ve always known they were linked together in ways I was aware of and ways I was not. It is not lost on me, at all, and it is not even a little coincidence, that I ended up writing a story about someone someone who knows he has trauma to heal, pain to reconcile, but unlike me, he choose to run away from it instead of doing the work. Of course, it’s also just a nice dark fantasy story with a little horror around the edges, too.

None of this was easy, but I believe that nothing truly worth doing ever is. There were times when I felt lost, and afraid, times when I gave up. My god, I gave up half a dozen times. But I got lucky, and the project moved slowly enough for me to catch up.

Now, I have to rest for a minute, but when I’m done, I’m going back to work. I have these stories I want to tell, and I think I actually know how to tell them.

Thanks for reading. I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to get my posts in your email, here’s the thingy:

1. Hell, I was excited to do the thing. I had a ton of ideas to choose from, and any one of them would be such a thing! ︎
2. That work is ongoing. I’m going to be on a recovery and healing journey for the rest of my life, with its own storms and calm seas. At the moment, I feel like I have just emerged from one of the must brutal storms I have gone through in a long while to find myself on pretty calm water, so maybe we can think of this as putting into my logbook what it was like to weather that storm, so I’m better prepared for the next one. ︎
3. I almost called them “little” but there are no “little” traumas and I have to remind myself not to minimize my experience, so I’m going to remind you, also. ︎
4. EMDR is science that, for me, is indistinguishable from magic. ︎
5. I know, that’s weird, especially from Captain Skeptic here, but it’s happened enough that I have to accept it, now. ︎
6. I’m auditioning phrases to use when I want to say “slowly and then all at once”. This one probably isn’t getting called back. ︎
7. Stares at camera in Trauma Survivor ︎
8. This is significant for me. I spent so much of my life (and still do, contra best efforts) just terrified that everything I tried to do had to be perfect on the first try, or else my dad would be right about me. It’s damn close to impossible to be creative when I feel that way, and even harder to make myself keep going with “good enough” or even “bad but something”. I’ve worked so hard to stop judging myself, I’m giving myself a footnoted gold star for actually getting there. ︎

This week’s story, Magnificent Maurice, or the Flowers of Immortality, was SO MUCH FUN to narrate. Here’s my intro:

About ten thousand years ago, some cats in Mesopotamia looked at a bunch of humans and thought, “I bet we could trick them into giving us food and shelter,” so they domesticated themselves. As a dog owner who is a member of my cat, Watson’s, staff, I’d say that it worked out pretty well for them.

This week, it is a privilege to tell you a story about one of the greatest cats who has ever lived (just ask him, he’ll tell you), a very special cat, with a very special job. I’m going to straighten my collar and make sure my hair is just so, as I tell you the tale of Magnificent Maurice, or the Flowers of Immortality.

You’re going to love this, especially if you are on staff for one or more housecats. In Patreon, we are celebrating our feline bosses, sharing their full names (Watson’s True and Full Name is His Royal Majesty, Sir Waddington Pottybottoms III, Esq.,The First of His Name, Head of The Complaint Department) and the titles of the songs we sing to them, featuring their names. It’s a lot of fun, and I encourage all of my fellow pet owners to jump in, here, if not there, and share.

Also, before I hit publish and get ready for work, I want to take a minute to thank all of you who listen to the podcast, who have subscribed to our Patreon, who have taken the time and effort to rate, review, and recommend us so we can grow. You are making it possible for me to do this, week after week, and I am intensely grateful to you. It is such a privilege to entertain you, to tell you these wonderful stories, and introduce you to authors you may not know, but I think you will love. And speaking of that, if you missed this, I wanted you to know that Senaa Ahmad, whose The Skin of a Teenage Boy is not Alive was on the pod a couple weeks ago, has a brand new short story collection out called The Age of Calamities (“Written by an inimitable new voice, The Age of Calamities is a genre-defying, mind-bending collection of absurdist, funny, and speculative short stories.“), that is available wherever you get your books.

It is such a gift to do this, y’all. If I can do this as my regular job for the rest of my career, if I never have to go work on camera again, if all I do is tell you stories and promote the Arts, I will be so happy. It feels like that has a very real chance of happening, and that fills me with such joy, I feel like I’m going to burst.

Okay. NOW I am going to go get ready for work. Stay safe, friends.

This week’s story is Wend-Way-Go by Tim Pratt. It was originally published in Uncanny Magazine.

I made a creative choice for this week that I haven’t made before on the podcast, and it was so satisfying, I wanted to talk about it a little bit.

When I was working on Star Trek, one of the adults in the cast — and I can’t remember who, no matter how hard I try — introduced me to the concept of “meeting the demands of the material.” They meant that our job as actors is to serve the writer’s intention, not the other way around. Before we start changing words or rewriting lines, it is our responsibility to do the work of understanding the author’s intent until the scenes work. And if the scene still doesn’t work after all of that, then it is time to talk about making changes. But you don’t go making changes because you’re 15 and don’t yet know what it means to be an actor, beyond following direction.

It took me awhile to process that, and it took me even longer to reliably meet the demands of the material, but I eventually got there and never left.

As a narrator of over 100 titles, my job is easier, more joyful, and more satisfying because I know to listen to what the author wants to say, and then do my best to communicate that through my performance. When it works, the listener doesn’t even know what I did; they just feel the story more completely than they would, otherwise. It’s a pretty great trick.

When we recorded this week’s story, Gabrielle (who directs and produces) and I both felt that the material was making a specific demand, that was also a gift to me: without saying so directly, Tim sets this story in what felt to both of us like South Carolina, for some reason. It was so clear in the text that the narrative character needed to speak in a soft drawl, that supported his fundamental gentleness.

It is a creative risk, to be sure. Accents are tough, and present a unique trap that catches me all the time when I discover I am doing an accent, when I should be performing with an accent.

So it’s exciting and a little scary, but I’m glad I did it. I loved this story, and I hope you do, too.

And now, links!

• Apple Podcasts
• PocketCast
• Spotify
• Pandora
• iHeart
• Amazon
• or grab the RSS directly from me right here.

You can also support the show on Patreon, where $5 a month gets you access to the show with no ads, a growing community of lovely people, live AMAs with me, and weekly insights behind the scenes of the show.

If this is your first time reading or visiting my blog, welcome! I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to get my posts in your inbox, here’s the thing:

“Hi Marlowe!” He said with a huge smile, while I struggled to keep up with her efforts to get her head under his outstretched hand.

While they enjoyed scritches, he and I had a long talk about the squirrels and birds in the neighborhood.

Y’all, I became a weird Bird Person so gradually, I can’t even tell you when it started.¹

Marlowe looked back at me, letting me know she had finished Friendship and was ready to return to Walkies.

Her friend and I said goodbye, and continued our walks.

We were about halfway up the block when I started thinking about my blog. Every morning, and almost every evening, I sit down at my desk and open WordPress. I click new and spend some disappointing minutes trying to post … something. Usually, I get overwhelmed by options or current events or both, and close the tab in frustration.

I’ve been trying, and failing, to find my way back to writing every day, even if it’s about something that I have decided is silly or pointless. Not everything has to be Super Important, I tell myself, and then I look at the news. It’s so awful. It’s like America ripped off the mask, and the monster we always knew was lurking underneath it wasn’t just a monster, it was a cosmic horror, indescribable and incomprehensible in its violence, fear, and anger. I look at that and I’m like, how can I not do something about this? How can I not talk about it, if only for the record? And I get stuck there.

One of the local ravens, Little Kevin, landed on a branch in front of me. They did that corvid chortle cluck thing, which I have come to understand is a greeting.

“Hey, buddy,” I said. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a couple of peanuts. I made my own clicking, clucking, chortling sounds as I tossed them into the middle of the street. Then I deliberately looked away, which I understand is a way to let corvids know we aren’t a threat.

I had only taken a couple of steps when their shadow passed across my face. I glanced behind me and watched Little Kevin pick up one, then two, peanuts, before they flew up into a tree. I made corvid sounds at them.

I love this, I thought. I’m going to mark this moment, so I don’t forget.

We rounded the corner, walking out of the shade. The sun was warm and welcoming on my skin. I am grateful for this. Everything is terrible, but I am grateful for this.

Maybe I’ll write about this on my blog, I thought.

And that’s when I got this anxious tightness in my chest, like I have a midterm in an hour and I haven’t studied. At all.

What the actual fuck is that about?

I don’t know, but It’s literally just a blog post, Wil. It’s not … whatever you’re making it.

I noticed that Marlowe was looking up at me, expectantly. I became vaguely aware of the jingling of dog tags. I realized that my body was on the corner, but my mind was someplace very far away. I realized that I was looking at a dog we call Marlowe’s Nemesis. Their Person waved to me, and I waved back. For the last three or four years, we have worked to convince our dogs that they don’t need to yell at each other when we pass on the street. Around a year ago, something changed and they both just … got over it. So now, when Marlowe sees her, she does a super good sit, just like I taught her. Her nemesis ignores us both, while their person and I exchange a silent greeting. None of us knows each other’s names.

“Better late than never, but waiting until you were 14 was certainly a choice, Mars,” I said as I gave her a treat.

Little Kevin flew over me and landed on the street light. They called, loudly, bowing their head a little bit and opening their wings. Almost immediately, another raven joined them. I was pretty sure it was their older sibling, who was a fledgling last year. We named them Kevin, after the bird in Up. Did you know that corvids live intergenerationally in the same nest? The older sibling will stay for a year and help raise the new fledgling². We watched Kevin teach Little Kevin how to hunt and eviscerate baby birds last summer, for instance. There’s nothing quite like walking out into the yard and discovering an avian ritual killing, first thing in the morning.

“Hi Kevin,” I said. I tossed another handful of peanuts into the street.

I’ve been doing daily meditations with the Calm App, off and on, for a few months. I started using it to help manage my anxiety, and to help fall asleep. It was super effective, so I looked into a more regular meditation practice, averaging about ten minutes a day. I can’t tell you why, because I don’t know and I don’t understand, but holy shit does it WORK. I struggle with nervous system dysregulation almost every day, and CPTSD flashbacks is my Sword of Damocles. I’ve been working diligently for years with a trauma-recovery therapist to help me, well, recover from my trauma. I use EMDR and IFS therapy, and it is working more effectively than I ever thought possible.³ I’m so much better, you guys, than I was just a year ago,⁴ but recovery is a journey with no destination beyond the next step, so my work doesn’t really end (but daily life has gotten much, much, easier. I think I may have enough to write a book about the experience).

So. To support my therapy, and give myself a kind of booster between sessions, I do meditation. I don’t know how it works or exactly what is happening, but I do know that, starting in like … October last year? I think? … I have been able to slow down in my head. I have been able to quiet my racing, anxious, worried, hypervigilant brain. And I don’t even know how I’m doing it, just that I am doing it.

Slowing down has made a huge, significant, difference for me.

A lightbulb popped over my head.

“Marlowe, this is important,” I said. “When I was regularly writing in my blog like twenty years ago, everything was slower. We didn’t have smartphones; we barely had dumb phones. We didn’t have social media. We didn’t have Influencers. It was slower, quieter. I could spend a whole day thinking about what I was going to write that night or the next morning. I wasn’t distracted and pulled in a dozen different directions. Daily life wasn’t an endless string of compounding traumas while we all hoped with everything we had that it will happen today.

“A thought that is now one or two posts on a social network was developed into a whole post on a blog. There was a community of regular readers who commented every time, and I had no idea how much I would miss that when it was gone.”

Marlowe looked up at me and did her best to understand. The Kevins fluttered down to the ground and began picking at the peanuts.

“It is unrealistic for me to expect myself to write now like I did then, because Now is fundamentally different. I am fundamentally different.”

Is it really as easy as adjusting my expectations for myself? Is it really as easy as not judging myself, and hitting publish instead of cancel?

There’s nothing tricky about it! It’s just a little trick!

I need to unplug. We all need to unplug. We all need to take breaks from the horrors. We need to slow down, even if it’s just for a couple of minutes.

Everything won’t be terrible forever. There’s a reckoning coming and I, for one, want to be ready.

If I don’t write about the mundane, if I don’t exercise the muscles I use when I make a post about walking my dog, watching birds, and reflecting on who I am right now, because all I want to do is scream at the horrors until I have no voice left, then I have surrendered in advance. I have given up doing something I love, that gives my life purpose and meaning.

I keep forgetting that I am a Helper, which I know is silly since I literally just wrote about that. But, you know, trauma makes you weird sometimes.

The Kevins followed us for a few houses. I tossed them some more peanuts and a minute later they both passed close by me, carrying them in their beaks. I could hear the soft rustle of their feathers and felt the downdraft on the side of my face.

I’m not gonna lie, it was magical.

When we got back to our house, I took Marlowe’s collar off at the driveway so she could walk up to the door. She got there ahead of me, turned around, and looked at me with that great Pittie smile, her tail wagging.

“You did such a great job, Mars,” I told her. “A+.”

We walked into the house. She had what Anne and I call “one thousand times drinks” from her doggie fountain, then lay down, happily, in front of the couch. I kneeled down in front of her and kissed the top of her head. She thumped her tail twice and sighed.

“I’ll be in my office if you need anything, honey,” I said, “I going to go write something for my blog.”

Thanks for reading. I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to get my posts by e-mail, here’s the thingy:

1. Yesterday, I was on my way out the kitchen door, stopped with a gasp, and quietly called Anne over to see the California Towhee that was perched on the wire over the patio. We have tons of finches and sparrows, even the occasional cowbird, but I just love the Towhees, and this was the first time I’d ever seen one on my patio.
   We sat there and made excited noises for a second. Then I looked at her.
   “Still punk as fuck,” I said.
   “Yeah, obviously. Still punk as fuck.” ︎
2. I was one of the lucky ten thousand about a year ago. ︎
3. Honestly, it works so well, it is indistinguishable from magic at times. ︎
4. today is a terrible anniversary; one year since America pulled the trigger on the gun it put to its head in 2016 ︎

Terrible things are happening. I’m upset. And I’m angry. And I’m so sad.

While I am looking for the helpers, I am also doing my best to be a helper.

I have to be honest: when a domestic terrorist organization, created and unleashed on us by our own government, are terrorizing, tear-gassing, kidnapping, and murdering with impunity, the way I help feels pretty pointless.

It feels woefully inadequate to me, but I entertain, I tell stories, I help you recover your hit points. It’s what I know how to do, and it’s what I do best. And I keep reminding myself that if I can make something that helps someone else create the space I have when I read a book or listen to an album, or whatever I’m doing to rest, then I have to do that. I can’t not do that. This is my purpose. I entertain, especially when it feels like entertaining is less important than something other people need entertainment to get a break from doing.

I want to be crystal clear: I am not comparing myself to anyone, or suggesting that what I do is equivalent, but we all do what we can, right? I’m doing my best, I think.

What I do right now, and what I hope to do until I retire, is tell you stories that help you create a bit of safe space to just … be … for a minute, a place where you can recover some hit points, while you listen. Today, I went to the studio, and told you a story that you will hear next week. I was so grateful to have a break of my own. I loved doing this story. It was so satisfying to focus on how I chose the narrator’s emotional point of view, to find my own narrative pace, to notice something in the narrative that I hadn’t, before. To feel that indescribable thing performers only feel in our bodies when we perform.

It was a privilege and a blessing, all made possible by authors who said yes, a team of people who believe in me, and so many people I will never meet, who trust me with their time and attention, week after week.

I am so grateful. I will continue to do my best.

As I was about to click publish, I noticed that there are 1000 new subscribers to my posts. Welcome. If you’d like to get my posts in your email, here’s the thing:

I know, I make it sound really awesome, and you’re all deeply envious of me. I’ll try not to flex about it too much.

I’m going to be on a little tour of New England to watch Stand By Me with my cast mates and a few hundred of our closest friends. It’s just three nights, with five hours days in a tour bus between them. It’s all going to happen so fast, it’ll be over before I know it, and that feels weird, since we’ve been talking about it for almost a year. I don’t know how the reality can match the buildup, but I’m looking forward to seeing what it brings.

If these shows go well (and we all expect them to go well) we have plans to do a bunch of cities next year, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of our film, and what it continues to mean to multiple generations of audiences. We already booked a handful in March, and if the stars and planets align, we’ll be doing something in a city near you, and something in Oregon, close to where we filmed the movie, next summer. Cross your fingers for us!

Once again, the locations for this week:

• December 4 at Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire
• December 5 at Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, New Jersey
• December 6 at Lynn Memorial Auditorium in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Oh, also! We didn’t release a new Storytime last week because it was a holiday here, but there’s a new one dropping on Wednesday. ALSO! I have my very first host-read ad coming up, which is something I never thought I’d been excited about, but it turns out I am. It’s so cool that something I made, that I love so much, that I want to do until I retire, is working out the way I’d hoped! Getting sponsors is one of those things that creates its own inertia, and is the best way we can keep doing the show for years (unless I get super lucky and 100,000 people want to be Patreon supporters — not entirely unrealistic, but not very likely, either).

I’m super grateful to be doing something I love, that I do well, that matters to people. It’s easy to forget that, or lose sight of it in the *gestures broadly at all this fucking shit every fucking day*, so I’m making an effort to remember.

If you want to get updates from the road, updates about future shows, and never miss one of my posts, here’s the thing: