Why Nick Offerman Has Carved Out a Place to Answer Your Questions

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.