Groundhog Day

I'm sure you remember "Groundhog Day," the quintessential '90s Bill Murray movie. I caught myself thinking about this movie as I drifted off to sleep last night. After a series of fitful dreams populated by imaginary versions of real people, I awoke in much the same way that Murray's character awakes countless times in the film--not to the last few bars of "I've Got You Babe," but to the familiar but still devasatating realization that I'm where I was yesterday.

It's going to take more than getting a job for my personal Groundhog Day to end, I can see that. A job for me is not far off. I've got an interview on Tuesday (for a part-time legal assistant position in Stamford) and I'd like to think that this is the real deal. Even if it doesn't work out, it's not like I'm going to be unemployed forever. But whenever I start working there's still going to be work to do; in fact, it will be at that point that the real work can finally begin. My joblessness isn't the cause of the mental/emotional rut that I've been in, it's a symptom. And earning a paycheck certainly isn't going to be a miracle cure.

It takes more than hooking up with Andie MacDowell for Bill Murray's character to wake up a day later. He wastes a lot of time trying to manipulate the world around him. He engages in a lot of destructive acts, like robbing banks and insulting people, which obviously aren't going to improve his situation. But when he gets around to doing nominally good deeds--saving lives, fixing flat tires--he's still no better off. It takes a wholesale reinvention, taking himself apart and putting himself back together piece by piece, for his living nightmare to end.

Throughout most of the film, everything the character does is intended to force himself out of the present and into the future. But the next day only comes when he finally lets go, accepts the present, and allows the future to come to him.