Acting? Time management? Woodwork? Whiskey? Meat?
Nick Offerman has thoughts on all of the above. And despite being busier than ever, the 51-year-old jack-of-many-trades has been carving out time to express himself through Donkey Thoughts, the newsletter-meets-conclave he's created for the rapidly growing self-publishing platform Substack.
"After publishing my fifth book last October (Where the Deer and the Antelope Play), I was finally able to admit to myself that I want to be a writer," Offerman told E! News in an email interview about the genesis of his latest venture. "I had been subscribing to the Substack outputs of a few writers I appreciate, and when a couple of my friends started publishing their own versions, I decided to cumbersomely cartwheel into the fray."
In addition to characteristically descriptive musings on everything from driving in L.A. traffic to handcrafting a Windsor chair, there is audio and video content, and Offerman will even engage with (well-intentioned) inquiring minds who want to make sure no stone is left unturned when it comes to probing the Parks and Recreation star's psyche.
Donkey Thoughts has "manifested itself in a question-and-answer format, which appeals to me powerfully," he explained, "as I thoroughly enjoy maintaining an ongoing engagement with my readership, without needing to navigate the snark and dross of social media."
And rest assured, this is not a case of a celebrity slapping his name on something and calling it his creation. Rather, this is pure, unadulterated Offerman, comfortingly Ron Swanson-esque and yet brimming with personal insight and turns of phrase so meaty you may want to bring a knife and fork. There's also no skimping on mentions of his "estimable bride" of nearly 19 years, Megan Mullally, so you know it's the real deal.
To explain the reasoning behind Donkey Thoughts and what he hopes to impart from his corner of the Internet, Offerman generously gave E! News the details in an exchange that really should be bound and distributed as a pamphlet, but which you can go ahead and read right here.
E! News: You've expressed yourself in many formats to date—TV, books, podcasting. What can we expect from you in this format?
Nick Offerman: I have always enjoyed the particular assignment of answering questions (much like these!), because I am able to curate which questions to address, as well as the tone and length of the answers. I, and nobody else, get to decide whether I'll respond with the tomfoolery set to medium clown, or dialed up to or full buffoon.
There are two tiers of subscription to Donkey Thoughts: 1) the text versions of my writing will always be free to all comers, and 2) the juicier stuff, like the ability to ask questions, plus audio recordings and videos, and maybe pickling tips(?) will be mostly available to only the paid subscribers, leaving myself plenty of wiggle room as I learn to navigate the landscape. Probably not pickling, on second thought, but honestly, you never know what the hell I'm gonna get up to. Never imagined I'd learn to cane chairs either, but then I needed some canoe seats.
E!: Your intentions are good, some others' might not be. Did you have any trepidation about extending an invitation to readers to engage?
NO: I have been very fortunate, by and large, in the general character of people who have chosen to write me an email or letter or approach me in public. I suppose I mainly have the good manners of Ron Swanson to thank for that. Folks are very respectful and deferential, with the occasional jerk or troll, of course, but I can usually handle any such provocation pretty neatly by ignoring them or avoiding confrontation by instead offering a more moderate conversation. Part of my overall stance is promoting the idea that we should all get along, and attempt to behave like good neighbors to try and achieve that end.
E!: Was this long in the works or a more recent idea?
NO: It developed pretty recently—I relish the opportunity to write a little more regularly than just my books, and by soliciting questions from my audience, I am able to lean on their prompts to consistently kick me into gear so that the onus is not solely on me to generate new material every week. By committing myself to this consistent embrace of engagement, I will then stand a better chance of maintaining the attitude of a student and hopefully continuing to inexorably elevate my own attitudes above the jackassery with which Mother Nature blessed me.
E!: What sort of writing environment do you prefer? Do you have a routine?
NO: I prefer a screened porch on a small log cabin overlooking a pine-forested lake in northwest Minnesota, say 60 degrees Fahrenheit with a decent breeze blowing the generous cumulonimbus macaroons ponderously across the sky. I have actually had the pleasure of enjoying this exact environment for a few disparate weeks of writing assignments over the years, but as a traveling flam-flam artist, the vast majority of my typing has occurred wherever the Fates have dropped me for the night: hotel rooms, airplanes, airports, Airstreams, Airbnb's, Arizona, Aragorn's air mattress (shhh)…
As for a routine? Not really, no. The other spinning plates in my life, like acting jobs, touring, administrating Offerman Woodshop, training for making rigorous love to my wife, then actually "getting after it," then recovering from our couplings, leave me little regularity when it comes to the weekly/monthly/yearly calendar. It's an absolute grab-bag of pursuits, year in and year out. Too many fun jobs. This is what we refer to as a "champagne problem" in our house. As in, (tearfully, plaintively mewled) "Maman! My diamond slippers are too tight!"
E!: While promoting your latest book, you talked a lot about kindness and wanting to put something out into the world that was a break from the noise. What are some of your restorative habits that help you stay sane and centered?
NO: I'm afraid the term "restorative habits" makes me ruefully chuckle with self-deprecation, as it just brings to mind of my own idealized paragons of centeredness, and calm, steady success, like Eckhart Tolle, Ava DuVernay, Elrond, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Charlotte the spider, Rebecca Solnit, David Byrne, and such like. Then, in that terrific and unrelenting way we humans constantly judge ourselves, I am immediately reminded of all the ways in which I'm not living "like them," or adhering to my most "holistic" life. Then I take a deep, steady breath to maintain my equanimity, as I regularly do, and realize that sipping sweet, substantial draughts of air is, in fact, a restorative habit. Ha-HA! Suck on that, Marie Kondo!
To answer you more specifically, I try to be responsible to the goings-on of the people of the world, paying enough attention to current events so as to remain aware of the state of things, without becoming too engaged, emotionally or practically. Because, no matter how loud I might try and get on social media, for example, I don't believe I can do all that much good in that echo chamber. I instead glean what I can from the journalists, authors, artists and comedy writers I follow, then squeeze and crank that intelligence through my bucolic filter, to form my own particular brand of content sausage.
My "everyday things" are hiking, running, spending time—feisty or not—with my wife, our dogs, and reading books. Books are a very good answer to shutting out "noise," because a bound sheaf of pages can't buzz or beep or pop advertisements up over the paragraphs into which you're escaping.
Another enormous part of this answer has to be that I make things. Throughout my life I have recognized the value, on more than one level, of making things with my hands or tools, with my keyboard, and with my friends and coworkers in the arenas of film, television and theatre. Not only is this an incredibly effective way to shut out the "noise" of which you speak, but it's also the means by which I earn my income, which hilariously allows me, when my life acumen is firing on all cylinders, to get paid for, among other things, achieving solace.
E!: What would you love to have people get out of the experience of reading Donkey Thoughts?
NO: I generally write to share with my readers information and ideas that fascinate me, and that I hope will also titillate and entertain them. When I wrote my third book, Good Clean Fun, with the assistance of my entire woodshop, I had an epiphany: the book is basically a memoir of my woodworking career up to that point, and the subsequent shop and community that I built to foment my habit, but it's also a simple how-to textbook for woodworking that you can read for a laugh but could also use for teaching in a dead-serious woodworking school. It made me wish that every textbook could be approached in such a manner, so that each discrete subject is presented in as fun, or, for crying-out-loud, as palatable a way as possible. I feel like we'd have a much higher national grade point average.
I hope to tickle my readers here and there (but not there), and also maybe enlighten them to some new information that I have also enjoyed learning, about dovetail chisels, perhaps, or how Collings makes their exquisite guitars, or how Olivia Colman can be so impossibly charismatic, or the ongoing improvements to methods of rotationally grazing one's beef cows. The great thing about such a conversation is that I get to learn as well, which will hopefully help keep this donkey from calcifying into any more of an ass than he already is.
(This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
Your curiosity appropriately whetted, you can find Donkey Thoughts With Nick Offerman here.