Spring (Insecurities) Cleaning

I'm writing this coming off of an uncharacteristically glamorous week – one in which many semi-famous friends descended on New York City in a swarm, as if some kind of migratory pattern for creatives kicked in, whispering, “Go east. The botanic gardens are really nice right now.”

I won’t list who all visited, both for privacy and because it would make me sound insufferably name-droppy (rather than my current "insufferably coy"). However, in a desperate attempt to still sound "relatable," I’ll assure you that my rolodex of the famous and semi-famous is what passes for “modest” – that is, if anything passes for “modest” when “famous” is in the same oxymoronic sentence. Still, to be clear: I don’t, as a rule, rub shoulders with T. Swift at karaoke before jaunting uptown to play video games with Timmy Chalamet/give him tips on how to groom his mustache to make it look extra thin. These are not the circles I roll in.

I did, however, do some dinners and events with folks who make TV and movies, write bestsellers, and host blockbuster podcasts (in contrast to my “mockbuster” podcast). It was a LOT, all at once, and a bit of a shock to the system, since my free time typically lacks "ooh, he fancy" events and tends more toward “me convincing Audrey that it’s worth it to trek an hour on the subway for a late night rep screening of The In-Laws, from 1979.” (It has Peter Falk, so – as a Columbo nut – she didn’t need much convincing.) 

Yes – as I will let no one forget – I wrote for The Daily Show back when it was an Emmy juggernaut, so I’ve had some experiences with glamor. Sure, most of my days were spent in cramped offices, with other bearded men wearing plaid and a too-small number of women trying to come up with pun titles for a story about Justice Alito (my winning pitch: The Human Dissentipede) – BUT one weekend a year, we got to step from the shadows, put on tuxedos, walk the red carpet, and think, “Oh, THIS is why people don’t typically wear heavy black wool in Los Angeles, in the middle of the afternoon.*

And yet, I gotta go out on a limb and say something controversial here – getting to do that? Pretty cool.

Being mostly on the outside just makes you crave the inside even more, of course. Earlier this week, I “kidded on the square” when I replied to a friend’s kind “Hey, thanks for coming out to my TV premiere!” with, “I haven’t had a TV job in four years. I would do ANYTHING to feel like I’m still part of the industry.” (Then I spent part of the evening fearing I’d been too glib and made sure to circle back and tell him that I think he’s the greatest and of course I wanted to come to celebrate with him. This is growth. This is therapy.)

Is this essay humblebragging? Probably. Regular bragging? I guess so – we all want to feel important. Is feeling important... important? Sure. But it's ultimately not what's important. Do I contradict myself? Well then, I contradict myself. Do I quote Walt Whitman? English majors represent. Am I starting to talk like Robert Evans? You better believe it, buster!

Why do I say it's "not important?" Well, here’s where I take a predictable turn into sentiment. The "glamour" was fine, but the important thing was to get out and feel connection – specifically connection to people who do work similar to my own.

A brief detour: I’ve been doing a “Staff Writer Boot Camp” offered by the Writers Guild of America. It's a series of sessions, designed to put writers who have less experience with narrative TV (i.e. dramas and sitcoms, vs. the “comedy/variety” shows I’ve worked on) together with showrunners who work in that end of television. It’s some free career development offered by the guild, which is reason one thousand that unions are good and it’s a goddamn tragedy that the rich fucks of the world and the governments funded by said rich fucks work so hard to destroy them. 

Anywho, rage aside – the point is that, during the initial session, the speaker asked us to scribble down what we wanted from the class and what we needed from the class. One writer volunteered that they just needed “to be in a room with people again,” which happened to be exactly what I’d written, as well, except I needed to be in a room with writers again. I needed that specific feeling of purpose and community.

I stopped working at The Daily Show during Covid, and (other than about a half-year’s work on a show that got canceled) my professional experience since then has been lockdown, followed by the writer’s strike, followed by the ever-greater contraction of the entertainment industry due to tech-bro-disruption-and-mismanagement. 

And now, here we are in 2025, with an American president dead set on tanking the economy, either through idiocy or malice, or some tangy combination of both. Meanwhile, despite a rising chorus of “nobody asked for this,”** big money seems set on outsourcing creativity to artificial intelligence despite a few hard-won, possibly theoretical, protections (but, again: thank you unions).

It could obviously be worse for me personally – I’ve enjoyed a very privileged career, including a podcast that has rescued me from the collapse of all this other stuff; and I’d also like to acknowledge that this is, sadly, some of the least horrific stuff going on in the U.S. right now, but I’m not gonna lie – shit’s bleak, people.

Belatedly getting back to the point – all this is a big reason why community felt so good right now. My visiting friends (or their production companies) may have treated me to a few meals, but the real nourishment was getting to be with other creative folks for a while. It's kind of instructive that everyone I spent time with this week was either a writer or podcaster (or both), and that they also seemed to need it, because (unless you’re in a writer’s room) those tend to be very lonely jobs. It’s either you plus a co-host or two (often over Zoom) for a few hours a week, followed by only text messages until next time; or it’s you with your pal the computer, typing. And if you try to use that computer to connect with the outside world? These days? You’re apt to read news that’ll send you into a tailspin.

So it was a real pleasure to talk with friends, face to face, not mediated by that bastard turncoat computer and his bad vibes.

It was a pleasure to talk about process, and learn “yes, okay, you too – you also can’t get your brain going until noon, and all ‘writing’ time before that is actually ‘puttering around time.’” 

It was a pleasure to sit with more successful folks, from my general line of work, and have them express genuine interest and excitement about what I’ve been doing – not as an indulgence, but as a peer. And hey, I know that my own career has mostly been nothing to sneeze at – yet, for me, it’s very easy to think, “Okay, well, I guess we all work in ‘showbiz,’ but MY work is only filed in the same cabinet with theirs because the bin marked ‘???!’ was already full. They had to stick me somewhere.”

The thing is, though, I could tell that even my more “successful” peers struggle with the exact same fears of personal or industry-wide decline. They also relish time with friends, both for its own sake and because it allows them to feel still in it. To make those same connections and feel those same reassurances. Success is no bolster against insecurity, and the only antidote to the lonely sadness of some of the work we do is to make those connections.

I think there’s some sickness in people that often prevents them from realizes and feeded the need for connection – we may “know” the importance intellectually without “knowing” it. Too often (and maybe I’m just projecting my own mental distortions; it wouldn’t be the first time!) there’s something within us that causes us to lick our wounds by cutting off from other people, because it’s “easier” in the short term to not have to deal with their pesky emotions while navigating your own urgent sadness – people want to cut off to "deal with their own shit," even though, historically, a depressed person is a terrible therapist for themself.

Even more bizarre: I think people sometimes secretly rage, “When I’M a success I won’t need ANYONE!” As if being cut off from companionship is somehow a desirable prize.

To make a (perhaps tenuous) link to an earlier theme – that’s why AI art is so useless. And when it comes to AI, I’m not necessarily an essentialist. There are scientific and medical applications for artificial intelligence with actual benefits. (Are they worth the loss in resources or workforce? Some I'm sure are. Others? I'm no expert.) However… why in the name of ever-loving fuck would you outsource creativity?

The whole fuggin' point of creativity is that it’s human. That it addresses our emotions, needs, desires. That it fosters understanding and connection. That it reflects the humanity of the creator – each decision, thought, and hours spent learning craft – and expresses something of that unique spirit from the maker to the audience.

AI art is all product. All result. It’s become the preferred art of fascists because fascists cannot understand the value of people if those people don’t provide "value" specifically to them. If the fascists, themselves, are not creative, they have no interest in the process of creating. They see the endpoint as the sole goal, with soul not a goal. And if they, themselves, cannot empathize with humans other than themselves, then why would they care about art, which exists, in part, to inspire empathy? 

They would be pitiable, if they weren’t such fucking assholes.

Anyway. Don’t be an asshole. Go out and be with your friends, whether or not they’re in the same line of work (even though shop talk can be a real pleasure). It’s spring. Let’s try to grow, not wilt.

*So the ceremony starts during primetime on the east coast. It’s the sort of thing you don’t think about until you’re in it.

**Speaking of the shittiness of AI, I cannot tell you the number of downright WRONG suggestions the grammar function of Google Docs tried to pitch me while I was writing this.

For earlier posts, check out the archive. In my other life, I’m a podcaster. Listen to my show The Flop House, here. In my other other life, I’m an Emmy-winning comedy writer. If you’re looking to staff, get in touch! And if you love the newsletter, you can always consider tipping me, by enrolling in the paid tier!