It’s been a long, long time since I’ve blogged for my own personal want. Well, like a little less than a year. Not because I don’t want to, I’ve just been really terrible with balancing the whole “writing for work” versus “writing for pleasure.”

Anyway, I’m about to start writing for work stuff, but thought I’d channel my thoughts to warm up my brain a bit.

I’m sitting on my couch watching the last and final episode of Friends, “The Last One.” Specifically this clip:

Two things struck me simultaneously:

1. Realizing that Jim Rash played “Nervous Male Passenger” feels like soft kittens purring around me.

2. “There is no phalange!” grants more meaning outside of a funny quip bridging a longtime, sitcom-satistfying plot point. And I didn’t recognize that ’til right now.

“This plane doesn’t even have a phalange!” Cue the actors running away in fear while the audience laughter ensues. Rachel throws her hands in the air and calls the freak out ridiculous. Why are people rushing to the exits over something non-existent? Why is their naivete taking over their rationale and submitting to the worry of worries when there are bigger things to worry about?

Folding it all into the real world though, I admit that I’ve been a bit of a “phalange”-crier myself. I’d worry about silly shit, like “OMG how the fuck will I make it to the grocery store if I don’t get gas? How am I supposed to make dinner?” Or, I’d worry like any good helicopter cat mom would, circling around my Dany girl, pondering if she’s going to become allergic to a food cause I keep feeding it to her or if she’s okay with staying in her room. I’d worry about my future plans, my future travels, my future, still-non-existent IRA. I just constantly allowed my mind to dip into anxiety for absolutely no reason.

That is, before I’ve faced real troubles, before life has shaken my body a little bit, before I understood that hardships are the hardest when they’re actually rubbing on your face like a cheese grater.

And then your simplistic thoughts are hammered down into a shallow heap on the floor. Forgettable. It’s replaced with reality.

Following the series’s finale, Nick decided to air the Friends‘s pilot episode. Lo and behold, there’s another phrase that makes a stage for itself. See if you can catch it:

Thanks, Mon. We all needed that.

Don’t submit or get caught up in the tangled “phalanges” of  your life. Don’t fear the petty. Really care for, fight for, worry about what really matters.