This is “Woof of the Week”, the newsletter about the things that make me say Woof the longest each week.
Feel free to subscribe to the newsletter (paid or for free) for weekly Woofs!
Welcome to Woof of the Week!
“I’ve got the two-burrito problem” is a joke I am constantly trying to make work. It requires a lot of things to go right though for it to land. Firstly I need to have or have had two burritos. Secondly the listener of the joke either has to understand I am trying to parody the title of the book The Three-Body Problem or knows that the two-body problem is also the phrase for a mechanics exercise. And most importantly, it (again) requires that I have two burritos.
Anyways Saturday I accidentally had the two-burrito problem.
Around the World in 80* Woofs
*more like, a handful of bullet points
Here’s some stories this week that made me say Woof.
Ethanol fumes coming from whiskey barrels in Jack Daniels warehouses has caused black whiskey fungus to spread across Lincoln County, Tennessee, covering homes and yards. Now that I’m constantly afraid of fungus taking over our brains because of HBO’s The Last of Us, I imagine that a fungus that feeds off whiskey would just make us better at drinking. That’s how fungus works right?
I like to imagine the what was going on in the mind of the editor who had to motion track and blur Jack Black’s crotch as he made a dynamic entrance in a Bowser onesie on the Kelly Clarkson Show.1 It must have been a career defining moment - either in the way where they were like "Wow I can't believe I get paid to do this!" or "Wow I can't believe my life has come to this."
A company that I have never understood has given me an actual reason for me to dislike it. Funko, the company behind the vinyl figures with the big heads, is sending $30 million worth of its products to a landfill. Apparently this was the most financially sound option, as CEO Brian Mariotti said on an investors call that the company was bleeding cash renting shipping containers to hold all of the excess inventory. When the most financially sound option is to just toss your product, the world feels … not great.
Like what you’ve read? Don’t forget that you can subscribe (paid or for free!) to the newsletter to get it sent directly to your inbox by hitting the button below!
Stuck Between a Woof and a Hard Place
Note: It’s important that you know upfront that there is no resolution to this story.
There’s plenty of things I don’t want to do on a daily basis. Finish my taxes, close my tabs, go through the big pile of mail in my living room. I’m a seasoned pro at saying “I’ll do that another day”, even though in the back of my head there’s this gnawing (and knowing) feeling that I should really just do what I need to do.
But it’s this effortless ability to put things off that has left me with my silly little life of having 30 open tabs, 1099s scattered around my room, and (again) this really big pile of mail. So I guess I’m not really coming out on top here.
According to “SolvingProcrastination.com”, internationally 20% of adults “procrastinate chronically”. It brings me comfort knowing that I’m not alone, especially when it’s 11PM on Sunday and I am once again sitting on an applebox, at my washing machine desk, writing Woof of the Week.
As I develop better writing habits, I’m also developing better working habits: “Let’s work despite a deadline, not because of it” I remind myself. However in life deadlines can pop out of nowhere – and this weekend I was confronted with a task that I was dreading having to complete.
(We’ve reached the part of this newsletter’s life cycle where my personal life will need to remain shrouded out of privacy. And despite how much Woof of the Week draws from and is informed by my reactions and thoughts on a matter that becomes personal for me, this root of this week’s Woof will need to remain private)
So what do you do when have something that you:
Don’t want to do
Is hard to do
You have to do.
Here’s what that process looked like this weekend:
I started by doing tasks that I had been putting off. In the morning I cleaned my stove top and read a New York Times article about a golfer I had vague memories of. It conjured thoughts about the importance of legacy and what it could be like to interview a semi-mythic figure. This led to me putting on End of the Tour, a movie which I had bought on Amazon for the low low price of free at some point during college and never watched. I microwaved leftovers and changed the water in my sprouting green onions. However I continued to fixate on what I was not doing. The more I put it off the more it made things feel like a bad time™ for me.
I tried to shake the feeling off. The afternoon rolled around and I played video games and caught up on comics. I woke up from a nap feeling terrible and decided to cook a lot of pasta, even though I knew I had ample time to do so tomorrow. I did the dishes two or three times as I had used way more dish-ware than I had intended to.
When the sun set I went to a comedy show and spent money I didn’t want to spend on parking (because I couldn’t handle trying to find a spot on the street) and beer. When the show started I laughed because the audience laughed, not because I was really hearing the jokes.
I left feeling like I had spent a lot of money for a whole lot of time in my head.
I took the highways home even though I didn’t need to and cursed off LA drivers because I could. Stepping out into a drizzle, I kept my beanie in my pocket and let every minuscule drop hit my hair. If it hadn’t been 49 degrees I probably would have stood out there longer. Inside I played more video games until it was time to take the trash out with my roommate. I let myself feel the rain again, but not as long because I didn’t want my roommate to think I was going through something even though I was.
I sat down to write this newsletter. I made a cup of tea. I wrote and rewrote the words you’re reading between reading reactions to the latest episode of The Last of Us on Twitter until I decided I needed to get it together and threw on Self Control to block my Twitter access. I staged the photo that you saw above. Surprisingly I felt like I nailed it on the first try so I went back to writing.
I made a second cup of tea and debated writing about how I stared at the water boiling. I wanted to write about how and why I don’t have a kettle anymore. And that watching the swarm of bubbles rush around the pot reminded me of how I am just one person in a sea of other people that are constantly brushing against each other, affecting each other in ways directly and indirectly. But I didn’t stare at the water so I didn’t feel like I had the license to lie to you about that.
I put on “But, Honestly” by the Foo Fighters, the guitar intro transporting me back to high school. Back then all I cared about was being in a band. Now I rarely play music. I thought about the moment I realized music was a hobby for me and not a career and how filmmaking (against my will and its) teeters closer to that line every day. I think about how I really really botched the drum part when covering “But, Honestly” in high school. My friend would later tell me I needed to be more confident. And a few months later my Dad asked me if I could drum softer. There’s no winning here.
I know we’re all guilty of putting things off. And my mental state is surely not as bad as it seems from reading this, I assure you. But sometimes things are hard to do. Working yourself up to the task is one thing, and doing it is another whole ass thing. It’s easy to get lost in the once a week newsletter you put out so that you can buy yourself just one more day. So, if just for one more day, allow me this grace.
I’ll get to it tomorrow, I promise.
Quote of the Week
This week’s quote is from a few weeks ago. It was said by an older man in a diner who seemed to be reuniting with three old friends. As they got ready to leave, he looked at them and earnestly said:
Thank you for not giving up on me.
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 -
How do you procrastinate?
How do you beat procrastination?
What’s your favorite Foo Fighters song lol
See you on the next one!
Submit Your Woof!
Got a Woof you want to share? Click below to submit your Woof.
Woofs can be submitted anonymously so even your most secret Woofs are safe to send. And if you’d just like to submit dog pictures you can send those too!
2023 Template Send Counter: 0
Btw if anyone wants to buy me that Bowser onesie let me know