# sometimes the dog walks you 

**Published by:** [40pi](https://paragraph.com/@donniecast/)
**Published on:** 2026-02-22
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@donniecast/sometimes-the-dog

## Content

Everywhere I look, I see tape with dates from the past. I... came so, so close to embarking on another procrastination voyage last night, but I stopped myself. And I'm feeling fucking great about it. As some of you may know, I contain multitudes. And as such, last night, I got twisted up in the idea that I needed yet another venue from which to ventilate my consciousness. And that maybe I should start a second blog. That, of course, would require a newsletter functionality, which meant investigating the most cost effective way to put out a newsletter and host those missives on a website and on and on and on. All of this because a very simple and delightful thing happened. A colleague from my past, who I haven't spoken with in multiple years, just reached out and said, Hey! Your name came up in conversation. Fast forward an hour after that initial message and we wound up spending an hour on the phone. Catching up. Like two human beings. And it was lovely. And then shortly after hanging up and beginning to cook dinner, I channeled my inner @dwr.eth. and wrote: best email? Because I thought, as I had said to this particular cocksucker, I have... so many interests, and passions, and pursuits, and questions, that I wrestle with. Day in and day out. And yet, these people in my life — they have no evidence. of my process or my passions. If you were to take my state name, punch it into your web querying tool of choice, you wouldn't find anything related to what I've spent days, weeks, months, I'm sure, cumulatively, years of my life exploring and contemplating. And that bothers me. So much so that I want to get some kind of tool. To send an email to a couple hundred people on a somewhat regular basis. But, of course, as the XKCD would point out, much of what allows our current digital ecosystem to survive, hinges on incredibly small, incredibly brittle. underpinnings. One of those underpaintings being SMTP, which it turns out, is still the way to keep email moving back and forth between earnest human beings, despite it being older than the ottoman empire. but try to send a hundred messages in rapid succession and that ancient tool will cast you into the fires of mount doom. Therefore, you gotta use a different kind of tool, like, you know, a substack. But of course we can't use substack because, you know, reasons. So, again, all of this bounced around in my head for a good couple of hours, before... my, uh... Before my earnest, well-meaning self grabbed hold of the wheel and said: Ah, ah, ah! You have a project that is occupying — has occupied — a huge chunk of your past attention. One that you are desperate to put into the world. And while your monkey mind is making the case that spinning up this second project will support the first one, the fact is it's better to have the first project, project prime, out in the world already. Which means stay focused. I did some reasonable amount of work yesterday on that prime project this past week. I think the shape is coming into better focus. My skills continue to feel insufficient, and... I wish that I could farm it out, but, of course, that would defeat the purpose of the entire experience. The good news is, I have at least one person that I can reach out to who I think may have have some expertise or some guidance — to help me with the stage of where the work is, which is great. I'm optimistic (cautiously) that this person will respond both promptly and with something useful to say. But this notion of promptness brings me to another issue. **** One of my most cherished human beings lamented to me recently that they live and die by their calendar. And that no day is the same. And that their routine is non-existent. I have feelings, both specific and general. on this front. The specific feeling with this person is. that there's not much evidence of a desire to live by process in how they conduct the rest of their lives. And I observe that as someone who loves process. All my motherfuckers who would gladly eat the same thing for breakfast for the rest of their lives — you know what I'm talking about. The desire to live in this way is something I've never seen this person exhibit. And so it's no surprise that when it comes to the use of digital tools, like a calendar or a text inbox, or voicemails, that there's not — there's not a predisposition to using process. Instead, what they experience is, the moment their phone lights up with new inbound, they stop everything they're doing. Including, like, operating a vehicle. They will pull over to the side of the road in order to respond promptly for fear of losing the thread. And yet somewhere between responding to that inbound and making a resulting commitment, they routinely wind up with calendar entries that are inaccurate, relative to what was discussed over iMessage (insert massive eye roll emoji here. I fucking hate iMessage). Now, I could make the case, as a dyed in the wool gadget fiend, that a different form of device might help. When I started using the very first Apple Watch, it only took about two weeks, maybe less, before it became immediately clear what the most valuable aspect of that device was — it taught me which things on my phone were truly deserving of interrupting my consciousness with a notification. and which things should actually wait for me to decide to come to them. And so, there's a case to be made. That this person, whom I love deeply and want the best for, would have an improved experience if, say, they wore something on their body that told them when to shift their attention. But if they had the tools, would they employ them effectively?

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