May 27th, 2021
If you are doing what you love and are good at what you do, I just want you to know that I am your biggest fan.
Especially if no one told you life was gonna be this way.
I just got done watching the Friends reunion special and guess what? I have something to say about it. (Please, hold your surprise and applause until the end.)
I’m a huge Friends fan. In fact, there are tens of millions of us. There are a lot of reasons to like the show and, like anything else made more than ten minutes ago, there are problematic things, too. But that’s not what this is about.
The story of Friends is the story of a group of people who were extraordinarily talented, extremely passionate about their craft, and who worked significantly hard to achieve what they did, both in the objective success of the show and the artistic. Watching them discuss, reminisce and appreciate that lightning in a bottle gave me the good feelings that is sorely lacking from a lot of the entertainment I encounter on a daily basis.
And as I was watching it, this thought kept crossing my mind, without my permission. It was you: the person who has nothing better to do than post a meme or negative aside about how awful Friends is.
The person who has to shit on what someone else likes.
On what this group of people who loved each other and loved what they did worked really hard to create.
And it just bummed me out.
But every time I got bummed out, something happened onscreen that made me laugh again, or made me tear up, or made me think, or just made me happy.
And that’s the secret, the antidote for the haters: you keep creating.
They hate, you make them laugh. They hate, you make them tear up. They hate, you make them think. They hate, you try, against all odds, to make them happy.
So there’s no point in shaming those who want to be negative on the internet. You may as well try to cancel the entirety of online behavior.
All I can say is this: if you’re doing what you love and you’re good at it, and you want my support — I’ll be there for you. Even when the rain starts to pour.
The Den 