Book Review

By Derryll White

Day, Felicia (2015).  Never Weird on the Internet (almost)

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”  – Eleanor Roosevelt

This quote, buried in the text, says a lot about this book and Felicia Day. I don’t know who Felicia Day is. I am a geek but I don’t game or YouTube much. I was attracted to the book by the title and by the idea that there might be a place where I would never be weird.  I am not sure that the Internet is that forgiving but I was immediately drawn in by Joss Whedon’s ‘Forward’ and then by Felicia Day’s style of writing.

In this book Day comes off as a unique individual – intensely creative, shy, a misfit with a huge heart who has created a world in which she fits.  She is honest about how hard that all is, and how temporary the fit sometimes can be.  But Felicia Day is very positive and works hard at trying to inspire others.  She honours the weird uniqueness in others – not a small gift by any means.  She makes the point that who you are is singular, therefore do not doubt yourself.  Just do it!

Perhaps the thing that excited me the most, really connected with me, was Felicia Day’s comments at the end, about the blankness after publishing.  When my first history book was published I felt as though a dump truck had unloaded my head.  I couldn’t remember even half the facts I had learned through years of research. Fuck!

Anyway, thank you Felicia Day for the great sharing of your path through life.  There are things here which I found useful.

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Excerpts from the book:

SELF – I know I shouldn’t introduce my own memoir with this amount of insecurity, but my personal life philosophy is always to assume the worst, then you’re never disappointed.

EXPLANATIONS – They say that the root of everything you are lies in your childhood.  Every emotional problem, every screwed-up relationship, every misplaced passion and career problem you can blame on the way you were raised.  So I can be kind of smug when I say, “Boy, do I have some excuses!”

INSIGHT – Knowing yourself is life’s eternal homework….  We have to dig and experiment and figure out who the hell we are from birth to death, which is super inconvenient, right?  And embarrassing.

WRITING – Every second of writing that script felt like walking barefoot over shards of glass.  I would write a bit and then I would sob, wanting desperately to erase what I’d just written.  Oh God, that’s not a scene, no one acts like that.  I have no idea what to make happen, who should talk next.  I hate myself.  Then I would force my fingers to type more, every word feeling like I was bleeding from every orifice.  I was engulfed with fear of making mistakes, of writing something stupid, of encountering story problems I couldn’t think my way out of.  I was, in short, terrified of the process.  It was not fun.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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