Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton

I've had Just a Geek on my reading list for some time now, but I have only really felt my interest in Wil Wheaton flare up more recently after getting back into Geek & Sundry's output again, specifically Critical Role and Tabletop. Since I was mostly familiar with Wheaton's work from around 2012 onwards, I was looking forward to reading about his work from before then.

Just a Geek is a collection of essays centred around entries that Wil Wheaton made on his personal blog wilwheaton.net, focusing on the entries between the website's inception in 2001 and the book's publication in 2004. In these essays, he focuses mainly on his struggles as an actor famous enough to be too recognisable for throwaway commercials but no longer famous enough to pull in huge crowds, as well as his complicated love-hate relationship with Star Trek and the community surrounding it.
It's kind of weird reading Just a Geek since most of my impression of Wheaton's work is from since he became something of a geek icon in more recent years. I didn't really see anything of Star Trek beyond the original series until I started dating my husband just over 7 years ago. By then, Wheaton had pretty much moved on from being "that guy who used to be famous when he was a kid" to someone who worked a little bit in all kinds of fields. I mean, I think the first thing I watched that featured Wheaton in the cast was Teen Titans, so to think that for years he was Wesley Crusher in the eyes of the world is a bit surreal really. As such, it was an unexpectedly sober reading experience, trying to mesh the charming persona that I had seen on Tabletop with the frustrated impotence of some of the early blog entries that are included here. There is a word that I had heard in my experiences on the internet called Sonder, the definition of which is as follows:

"The realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own - populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness - an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you'll never know existed, in which you might only appear once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk." 

While it mainly applies to random people who may cross your path only once, I do think it has more general applications. With Wheaton, it was something of a shock to hear him talking about just how depressing it could get with regards to wasted career opportunities, auditions that went to flavour-of-the-moment actors, and the difficulties balancing work and family life, because while he does come across as a lot more genuine than a lot of actors, you do get the realisation that there is a lot more under the surface than perhaps you want to acknowledge when watching something silly and fun like Tabletop. And maybe you get to see the shape of how his life continued, to the point where the 2010s come along and he seems to be in a much better place, though still looking enviably baby-faced. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I appreciated just how much Wheaton admits to his audience here. It's a brave thing to do, especially for someone so inextricably linked to the near-universally disliked Wesley Crusher.

An interesting and touching collection of essays that focuses on his difficulties with his prior child star status and his growing investment in blogging and writing. His style is incredibly readable, with a lot of charm and personality. Also kudos has to go to him for focusing on some tough subjects that most people would try and gloss over. 5/5

Next review: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Signing off,
Nisa.