This book currently has it’s own dedicated website: www.itsonlytuesday.com.au It will have details there relating to the book and any future collaborations between Paul and myself specific to the ‘Its Only Tuesday’ vibe. Beyond that website, below are many of my thoughts on the book, more detail behind the backstory, writing experience, and a more personal account of it. A bit like 18 & Lost? So Were We, this book had a funny and unusual journey. Enjoy!
Holy Sh!t, It’s Only… Tuesday?
The Origin—From a Serious Self-Help Book to a Silly, Workplace Satire
It started fresh off the back of 18 & Lost. Liam, who was working with me on The Constant Student told me about this man he’d met championing something called ‘The Laughter Project’. This Laughter Project fellow was also was writing a book—about the importance of laughter in life and work. And, well, he was looking for a bit of help. This man’s name was Paul.
The first time I spoke to Paul Rowse, I didn’t know what to make of him. He had a walk and a talk that just didn’t fit in—I stole that line from Shawshank Redemption, but it applies to my buddy Paul. Paul really is a unique fellow, a larger-than life character and super nice bloke who, like me, has a few brain cells missing in the ‘social conformity and behaving how you’re supposed to behave’ section.
Paul’s story is fascinating. He grew up in a strict Sectarian religion, has had four wives, accidentally made millions in the cleaning game and was very explicitly left out of his dad’s will—as Paul told me when we met, if he’d taken it all seriously, if he hadn’t found a way to laugh along the way, he never would have survived. That was his message and the message he wanted to spread. After our first phone call he decided I was going to help him write his book. I was to be something of a ghost-writer/book ‘advisor’ seeing as I was very busy trying to kickstart The Constant Student at the time.
Fast forward three months—we’ve decided to move away from the original non-fiction book idea and write a fiction book instead, and now we’re co-authors. This side gig eventually became my life’s main focus for the better part of two years. I first met Paul in October of 2021—Holy Sh!t, It’s Only… Tuesday? was released September 24, 2024 (I know that’s three years but there was a bit of a lag between finishing and publishing).
Living Parallel to the Work
The funniest part was realising this serious book we were writing, about the importance of not taking ourselves too seriously, had to be thrown out. We decided the overboard self-help approach really wasn’t our vibe and that we were much better off telling a story, making people laugh, and letting them take away their own lessons—if there were any to be taken at all.
What’s interesting is how this journey of the book mirrored the personal journey Paul and I were on. That is, the decision to change the whole vibe of the book was also a decision to change our whole vibe—to move away from a place of preaching and towards a place of light-heartedness and comedy.
The Writing Experience
This writing experience was a pleasant yet painful challenge. Not only because Paul lives in Adelaide and I live in Sydney—but because the original intention was to write a self-help book, it was hard to wash this out and let ‘Holy Sh!t’ be more of a story. Neither Paul or I had written a comedy, satire or fiction book before, but we decided we’d just figure it out and whatever happened, happened. We’d work on large book drafts with no idea what our story was, then progressively cut back on the preaching. The preaching was analogous to cockroaches in an Aussie Summer—they keep creeping in! Just when you think you’ve sprayed and plugged every entrance, they pop up again in the most unexpected places.
It was a difficult balance, trying to discuss deeper topics but in an organic way. Making character conversations relatable and believable, figuring out dialogue, balancing the narrator voice—these were all things we agonised over.
The ‘Retreat’ Scene
For example, the last major scene in the book is a personal celebration event and weekend away, but it started out as a retreat. The retreat was the bridge between the self-help book (our initial idea) and the fiction version we ended up with, because we came up with the idea of a retreat and characters to make our point clearer while still in self-help mode. So, ironically, the retreat which the fiction idea was born out of was totally reconfigured in the final version.
Often the things that help us to begin with need to be put aside when they no longer serve us. There’s a famous analogy of a man who survives crossing a great river thanks to a raft. After reaching the safety of the bank, he carries the raft with him until he stops at a forest. With the trees so close together, he can’t continue while the raft is still on his back.
The raft, in our case, was the retreat scene. I bring this up because I think it’s relevant to the book. A major theme of the book is ego and taking ourselves too seriously. As you’ll see if you read it, the idea of one state of mind or perspective helping us survive to a point, before later starting to interfere, is a really big challenge for certain characters, just as it is, cough-cough, for many of us in real life!
Choosing Satire
We chose to do a satire on the workplace and focus on company culture. Even though our interest went beyond the workplace, we couldn’t think of a better and more relatable setting to showcase mankind’s excessive seriousness and drama. Large companies and formal corporations are particularly known for bureaucracy, complex power dynamics, politics, competition, abuse and many forms of absurdity. Workplaces bring out a part of someone’s personality that might never otherwise see the light of day. Two notable shoutouts have to go to The Office and the Aussie sitcom Utopia that capture this expertly—hopefully you’re aware of these shows already but if you’re not, give them a go! These have a very similar vibe to our book.
Culture was interesting to Paul and I because of our broader interest in human nature and our tendency to philosophise. It’s a modern buzz word, but an undeniably powerful force. It’s also incredibly complex. Paul has spent decades building a large organisation himself, so culture-building was inevitably one of the cornerstones of his journey. Culture impacts everyone, but not everyone behaves the same when faced with the same cultural forces. I believe people’s capacity to function as an agent who is either very impressionable to, or resilient against culture, has a lot to do with deeper aspects of their nature—things like their relationship with themselves, childhood, insecurity, and how they assess their self-worth. Anyway, we attempted to explore that sort of stuff in a digestible way!
Personal Life Overlap
This book marked a big transition for me personally. As you’ll no doubt guess from certain characters in the book, it helped me through the most frank self-confrontation I’ve ever had—in the middle of writing this, I reached a point of shock at and disappointment with the sort of person I was becoming, how I’d overlooked the simple basics of being a good person while trying to achieve other things. At the same time, and as a consequence of this self-examination, I gradually realised I was much more interested in writing fiction than non-fiction going forward. Before this book, I was trying to build a career as a young thought-leader and change-making entrepreneur. After this book, I’m much more attracted to entertainment, comedy and storytelling.
I’m not sure if this book is any sort of literary masterpiece, but for my subjective taste, there’s a lot to admire about it. I’m impressed and proud of it as a whole but particularly proud of very specific lines, scenes and passages.
This book could be a bit muddled and jumbled for some—mixing philosophy, humour, tones of self-help and fable-like passages all in one. If it is a bit muddled, that’s an acceptable cost for me. That unusual mix and blend of forces was exactly what was happening for myself and believably Paul too while on this journey. It is a consequence of what we were experiencing, what was driving us to write. On a personal note, our journey was to be the least pretentious authors we could be—which is not too hard because being an author typically goes with a lot of pretentiousness.
A lot of our marketing, even at this early stage, has been quite funny, quirky, absurd and unusual—and very unprofessional (gladly). The book hasn’t made any major breakthrough yet, but even at the level it’s reached so far, there’s so much to be proud of.
Reasons Why
This experience was a lot of fun but still no walk in the park. I also spent a lot of time worrying about where it would go and what my personal future would be, particularly my financial future and career direction, as well as how that would impact other life opportunities like relationships and having a family. Reflecting on all that, I think these very small dilemma add to the meaning of the book. For me, it was about fighting back against this tension by letting things be, rather than trying to plan my way as I had before. The ultimate resistance to this resistance I felt was simply enjoying the process and journey of this book however it could be enjoyed. As Paul says, the book was ‘our therapy.’
He also came to me one day and said, ‘I know why we’re doing all this, while we’re doing the book.’
‘Why’s that?’ I asked.
‘For fun.’
The interesting question to ask oneself is, what is worth working on over several years that, even if it’s only shared among or enjoyed by few people, or even no people, is still worth doing? What’s worth doing for an ‘Audience-of-None’?
Looking back, I remember all the laughs we had. The countless Zoom sessions, the late nights at Paul’s place in Adelaide or working on it in the lobby of a Sydney hotel and Paul advertising the book to hospitality staff. Sitting in Sydney’s high-brow Chifley Square, surrounded by the country’s most important, smart, but admittedly pretentious business people, and having the nerve to be writing a book mocking them while sipping long blacks on their turf. There was also the trip to Melbourne, the funny but meaningful promotion stuff we recorded in Adelaide, and everything in between.
Working on this book was probably the most financially reckless thing I’ve ever done—written between the ages of 26-29 while my friends were buying properties and getting ready to settle down. Maybe I did it for terrible reasons—just to be different, counter-cultural, a show-off know-it-all, an over-zealous, ego-driven, entitled bum. It may be the single greatest mistake I ever make.
Maybe. But it was fun.
Reviews
Elisa.
‘Hello Paul, How are you? Hope things are well in your world!
I finished Holy Sh!t, it’s Only Tuesday and I really enjoyed it! It was very clever the way you were giving advice on workplace culture, and therapy, and personal life direction, through characters who were so clueless – much more interesting than reading a ‘how to’ business manual! I am VERY curious about how much of it is based on personal experience (a lot, I’m assuming!) Maybe we can have another coffee sometime, and you can tell me the insider knowledge?I had a good laugh, and also took away some mantras. I loved the line about ego, ‘you’re performing for an audience who isn’t paying attention’ (I think it was Alan that said that?). Even though your overall point was that ‘nothing really matters’, there were lots of things that were inspiring in there – love for people, among them.Thank-you so much for sharing it with me!’
Macca
‘I have read many books on Psychology.
This book delivers insights into workplace behaviour and its’ faults in striving to succeed in business, wealth, and stature in the community, at any cost. It is a light hearted, thought provoking and humurous novel. If you have a boss or friend, that is intimidating and overpowering, manipulative and greedy (aka Norman Stern), leave a copy of this book on their desk, or in their letterbox.
Well done Paul and Joe on putting a witty tale together on workplace relationships, a subject these days, that can be taken way to seriously. And what’s with this Alan guy?
A Happy Reader. Macca.’
Dominic
5.0 out of 5 stars Funny & relevant in today’s world!
Reviewed in Australia on 16 November 2024
A critical analysis of the corporate landscape through a humorous lens in which the superficial values of revenue and business growth are juxtaposed against employee wellbeing and workplace culture. What really matters ? Joey and Paul lead you down this path through their fictional (and not so fictional) characters and suggest an answer in the closing chapters. An engaging and light hearted read which is bound to put a smile on your face. Great book!
James
5.0 out of 5 stars Funny, irreverent and insightful
Reviewed in Australia on 3 November 2024
Joey is a smart and funny person reflected here in his writing as is his depth of thought.
