There's always room for Wheaton!

I've mentioned here before that I'm a fan of the writing of Wil Wheaton. He shares a lot of insights into life that people usually take for granted. Whether it's his Geek in Review summary or little snippets he shares from his life, every time I tune in to the Wheaton channel I find something entertaining, enlightening, challenging or pensive which is why I try to make time every day for a visit to Wil Wheaton's blog; it's one of the few highlights of my life I can enjoy while at the drudgery of my employment.

Here's just another reason why I enjoy his blog.

Big News from the Land of Wheaton

Wil Wheaton has announced on his blog that he will be a contributing writer for the second volume of STAR TREK: The Manga .
This is big news for us unabashed geeks and Trekkies (or Trekker if you prefer), and commemorates Wil's first foray into the realm of fiction writing.
On his blog, Wil states:

Initially, I was terrified at the prospect of creating and writing this story, but this voice in my head kept saying, "Dude, this would be so cool! Come on, man, let's do this!" Ultimately, I decided that if I'm going to truly call myself a Writer, and if I'm truly going to write that novel someday, I've got to tackle fiction sooner or later . . . and what better way to test myself than with characters and a universe that I already know?

Wil's previous works include Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot, as well as his Geek in Review collumn. Wil has spoken about his interest in writing a fiction novel in the future.

Why Wil Wheaton Frackin' Rocks

From Wil Wheaton's kickass blog

When we were waiting to clear customs, a young girl came up to me and told me how much she loved my work. She asked me if I'd take a picture with her and her drill team, who were there for a competition or something.
I did my best to be patient and kind, but I told her that I was exhausted, and I looked and felt like hell. She was visibly disappointed, but said that she understood and apologized for bothering me.
"You know," Anne (who had been barfing her brains out the entire flight, and surely felt worse than me) said, "that girl was really excited to meet you, and even though you're exhausted, it only takes a minute to give her a good memory, or a lousy one."
This began a pattern of Anne being right, and me saying, "You're right."
I found the girl, who was with her team, and I told her that I was really sorry for blowing her off. I told her how exhausted I was, but I really appreciated her kind comments about my work, and if she was still interested, I'd be happy to take a picture with her and her team.
She blushed, her friends giggled, and I ended up posing for pictures with most of them individually, all of them as a team, and signing a few autographs. It ended up being really cool, and was a moment that profoundly changed the way I dealt with that "celebrity" thing that I was never really comfortable with: though I always thought "celebrity" was bullshit, it was one of the first times I realized that, even though I didn't think of myself in those terms, there were some people who did, and with that came a certain amount of responsibility.
It's . . . interesting . . . to me that I have that moment so clearly burned into my mind. I wonder if those girls even recall it, or if they even have those pictures. But I'm pretty sure that if I'd just gone to my hotel and taken a nap, they would recall that time I was the asshole, and I wouldn't recall it at all.
I know that there were lots of moments in my teenage years and early twenties when I really was the asshole. There were times when I was extremely selfish, immature, unhappy, and uncomfortable in my own skin. These were not good times to meet me, and though they are over a decade in the past, I occasionally recall some dick move I pulled somewhere, and I seriously want to find some way to apologize and make whatever dick thing I did right.
I know that I can't travel back in time to change those things I did that I regret, but as I've written before, I really like who I am now, and I have a wonderful, wonderful life. Like Picard said in Tapestry, "There are many parts of my youth that I'm not proud of... there were loose threads . . . untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads . . . it had unraveled the tapestry of my life."

Wil, you frackin' rock, dude.
There's lots of reasons we geeks from and around your age group look up to you, and this is one of them. It takes a lot of guts to even turn the human perception inward and discover, acknowledge and eviscerate our own faults, but to do it in a public forum takes guts.
From having worked in the high-ticket security industry and from having met many celebrities through work, I can say with some small authority your humility and down-to-Earth nature are rare.
That's why you frackin' rock, Wil.
Thanks for bringing your insight and wisdom into the lives of lowly geeks like us.