Welcome (Back) to Woof of the Week!
We are back! After nearly a year-long hiatus, I’ve returned to grace your email inboxes weekly with a new Woof.
If this is your first time reading, thanks! This is “Woof of the Week” where I write about some of the things that made me say “Woof” the longest each week. Whether it’s international news, or just something that happened as I was heading out the door – it’ll be broken down in excruciating (and hopefully entertaining) detail here.
This newsletter will come out Every Week (I promise!) so make sure you don’t miss an issue by hitting the Subscribe button below -
AND – If you’re interested in seeing what “Woof of the Week” could look like this year, please consider supporting it by signing up as a paid subscriber! You can sign up for as little as $5 a month which is less than the price of a large iced cappuccino from a coffee shop that opened up in my suburban hometown.
(Drip (down?) coffee economics am I right?)
I plan on experimenting with audio and video components that will have you saying “Woof” when you think about the amount of work that will go into making this newsletter - and would love to have you all onboard for the ride!
Thank you for reading, and I’m looking forward to spending 2023 sharing this newsletter with you all!
Around the World in 80* Woofs
*more like, a handful of bullet points
R o a s t e d
Ah, the week between Christmas and New Year’s - an amorphous block of days where time doesn’t feel real, yet remains ever increasingly so as the clock ticks down before we hear “Auld Lang Syne” in some form.
Here’s some headlines from this week that made me say Woof:
Pour one out for all the stranded holiday travelers this year – between canceled flights, lost luggage, and having to pay big bucks to get a rental car, it certainly seemed like this year was an ouroboros of holiday travel woes. Here’s hoping everyone got wherever they needed to go, and if you didn’t… maybe you have a Woof to submit?
A win for the public that undoubtedly had Andrew Tate saying “Woof” or whatever the most “alpha male” version of Woof is (Awrf, maybe?) If you missed it, the self-proclaimed misogynist was arrested on charges of human trafficking and rape in Romania. This comes after his very public attempt at “clapping back” at Greta Thunberg after being annihilated by her response to a tweet he directed at her. In a possible lesson on the importance of recycling your pizza boxes, you can read a summary of the events by NPR.
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New Year’s (and the Old Year)
New Year’s likely takes the cake for me when ranking “Most Woof-able Holiday“. There are just so many expectations that go into the start of the new year – be it resolutions, the anxiety of choosing what to do on New Year’s Eve, or the (frankly unfair) expectations set by When Harry Met Sally.1
When reflecting on this year, the first thing that came to mind was the intense period of burnout I experienced. I spent months feeling lethargic and directionless, while all the while stressed about the things I wasn’t doing. And just like the first time I was burnt out, if I told someone I was feeling better – I really wasn’t. The whole experience casted a long shadow on a year I wasn’t eager to look back on.
So, ready to write 2022 off as a Woof, I pulled myself up by the bootstraps to try and cobble an end of year “photo dump” on Instagram. (Gotta stay relevant, right?) I thought at the very least I could do something funny, caption it like, “One accidental selfie from each month”. But as I was scrolling through my photos, I found myself surprised at how much I had forgotten happened this year.
This past year I got to return to cities I knew as a kid as an adult, saw the US by train, and went to Mexico for the first time. I attended the weddings of a family member and one of my best friends from high school. I sat next to a cooler of freshly bought fish while driving across the George Washington Bridge at 3AM, met astronauts (on Earth, not in space), and played A LOT of pickleball. From 4AM subway rides back to New Jersey, to rollerblading with friends in Pasadena, I was reminded how lucky I am to get to live the life I lead, and how grateful I am for everyone in it. And no period of burnout can take away all the experiences I was able to partake in and share this year.
So instead of spending this newsletter decrying a year I thought I had spent largely inside, I compiled a list of New Year’s Resolutions that (likely) won’t have me saying “Woof” because I’ll have hopefully accomplished all of them by this time next year!
(1) Buy a Candle
I recently discovered a canned candle I had stored away that’s supposed to smell like space. Realizing I only owned a faulty matchbox, I bought a ~very tech~ electronic lighter.2 Cracking open the candle, I was so excited to finally smell space first hand! But the smell was quite weak, likely due to the fact that the candle was given to me around 2016. I had to stick my nose right up to it to get a hint of the scent, and I can tell you firsthand that space smells … fine.
So I’d like to get at least one candle in the new year! I forgot how much of a presence they were when I was younger, and also forget how long they last. This canned one’s been going on for a while though, so I’m pretty optimistic that just one might cover me for the whole year…? Plus, I’ve got to use this electronic lighter for something – otherwise I’m going to keep turning it on and off and will inevitably set fire to an errant receipt on my desk.
(2) Eat a Little Slower
Now that I’m freelancing again, I’m less beholden to the messaging apps that once ruled my life. Begone Slack! Begone Telegram! No more group chats, no more forwarding messages, no more frantically refreshing for notifications. More time for cooking and enjoying good meals!
Unfortunately my stomach has not fallen suit in “enjoying” the fact I have “more time”. If I’ve sat down with dinner and a TV show, there is a strong possibility I will have made my way through more than 70% of my meal between the theme song ending and the first commercial break. Woof!
So in 2023 I’d like to eat a little slower. Enjoy the meal WITH the show, not as separate entities. And also, you know, set a better foundation for digestive health as I get older.
(3) Stop Telling People My Watch was a Sponsored Gift
Often when I’m out and about, I get a lot of compliments about my watch. And fair - it’s a nice watch3, there’s a reason I wear it often.
The catch is that instead of saying “Oh, thank you!” I often say instead, “Oh this was actually a sponsored gift! I used to work for a YouTube channel and they would send us a TON of free stuff. Yeah like coolers, headphones, yeah you know like Magic Spoon? That healthy cereal? Yeah, we used to get that for free ALL the time. We used to have this box actually where we put all the cereal and whoever was in the office could just take whatever they wanted. Anyways, one of the sponsors we had was this watch company, Vincero. I don’t know if they’re around still but they used to send us watches all the time. I even gave one to my Dad once. Yeah they were all really nice quality too! I mean look at mine, it’s held up pretty well. Actually if you go to the video, you probably could still use the discount code that we say in the video–”.
Just take the compliment Evan. Just take the compliment.
(4) Take It Easy
It feels easy to look at the start of the year, then where I am now, and feel down for not continuing to climb a ladder of visible success. I’m frequently comparing myself to others, be it friends, peers, or strangers on the internet. And in trying to forge ahead, I’ve found myself shutting down more than I’m used to. It can all be incredibly overwhelming, disheartening - a continuous spiral of punching down on myself.
So all bits aside, I’d love to spend next year being more honest with myself, letting myself know it’s “ok” that I’m not where I thought I’d be, and reminding myself that, truthfully, I never even had a place I thought I’d be in the first place! The metric of success is so variable! And happiness can be a choice. Perhaps it’s time to lean into the unpredictable and follow the threads that feel good?
Maybe this is a little too “Eat, Pray, Love” coming from me, but I hope to spend the upcoming year working on myself in little ways – being more comfortable with pursuing whatever it is I want to pursue, being easier on myself, and taking it easy the whole way through.
(5) Start saying “cuppa” more
God I love making myself laugh. I've been catching up on Taskmaster, one of my favorite British panel shows, so I have all of this English slang I want to use. In 2023 we’re no longer getting tea or coffee, we’re getting a cuppa. I’m co-opting4 this the same way corporate America co-opted5 cheers as an email signature.
Y’all aren’t ready for this.
Happy 2023 everyone! Be it everything you hoped for and more! And if it’s not? That’s perfectly okay too - and we can always talk about it over a cuppa ☺️
Quote of the Week
I keep a note on my phone of quotes I hear in everyday life. This week I’ll be sharing two quotes, the first & last quotes I wrote down in 2022!
First, and somewhat fittingly, a quote from a phone call with a friend in January:
I think it’s ok to mess up in LA. You have to forgive yourself… on the rocks.
This sounds darker than it is, but I promise you we were talking about alcoholic drinks, so there’s some wordplay stuff going on and… ok moving on to the last quote of 2022, from a friend at a bar a few nights ago:
I’d rather show everyone twice than miss someone once
Sometimes you just can’t help showing your friends the things you love. I’ve got a lot of cute pictures of my baby cousins on my phone and I’ll be damned if you don’t see them at LEAST twice.
That’s all folks!
Thanks for reading this week’s edition of Woof of the Week! Leave a comment because I’d love to hear your thoughts! Some questions I have for you -
Any resolutions for 2023?
What would YOU like to see in the newsletter this year?
Unrelated to the entire newsletter, but if you play Marvel Snap PLEASE get in touch so I can talk to someone about this game!
See you on the next one!
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Spoilers for When Harry Met Sally!
Not an Amazon affiliate link, just where I bought it from lol
Picture of the watch by me!
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