Every Day is Groundhog Day in the 2020s

Did you hear about the plane parts that fell from the sky in Colorado? Was anyone else’s first thought, “oh, no, this is Chicken Little in real life”? Did you think about Lost? I’ll tell you what, it certainly made me more certain that I’m no fan of flying.

It’s cool, sure. I took a planes class in college—taught by the engineer behind the F-22 Raptor. It was a fun class. Planes and space and innovation are cool. The amount of testing those things go through to be prepared for flight is extensive. My professor used to constantly tell us how perfectly safe they are. Made us watch videos of wing-bending and turbulence tests. But I have anxiety, and anxiety knows no logic.

Here’s what I do know: nothing should surprise me much anymore. Unreliability of politicians. Celebrity cancel culture. Marvel hiring really hot people. Allergy season. That I will undoubtedly buy another crewneck sweatshirt without pause if it’s remotely cute and comes in an XL.

It’s really made me highly conscious of my sense of self. Of life and impermanence and what people are going to say about this period of time in a hundred years—ya know, if our planet makes it that far. Look, I’m having an existential crisis, okay?

I’m a nostalgic person, I admit it. I miss the simplicity of my youth. Not the utter lack of awareness, of course, but the ease of just walking over to my neighbor’s house to see if she wanted to climb trees or pretend to be the girls from Charmed. Of my quick metabolism allowing me to basically eat all the junk food I craved. Of having a bedtime dictated to me, so I didn’t end up staying up until all hours writing lame posts for a blog about 5 people read…

I’m not saying it was that great back then, I’ve been depressed since I was ten (according to memory and mean girls and crying in bathrooms), but at least I knew mostly what I was getting myself into every day.

Time moves so quickly now it feels impossible to focus on one thing for too long. Many of us don’t have the time to process anxiety or our mental health because it feels like we’re being left behind. Like, why am I twenty-five and panicking that I’ve made a mess of my life because I’m not some success story? I think that I’m a failure because of all the rejections from agents and journals and jobs applications—when I’m well aware that rejection a major part of life. A major part of making real moves. I partly blame the fact that sixteen year-olds are making millions of dollars on Tik Tok and I’m currently writing this from a folding table I’ve fashioned as a desk because I can’t afford a real one.

When the hours move so slowly from inside this room as I answer email after email, squash fire after fire, it feels like the world outside is moving faster than in here. And moving on without me. I know we millennials don’t like to be lumped into things like killing the dryer sheet industry or whatever, but I still call it the Millennial Slump Years. We’re all feeling it! And if we’re not right now, we more than likely have at some point.

And even then, if you haven’t been there at all yet…well, brace yourself.

I’m kidding, mostly. You don’t have to have trauma to be successful or whatever. But who of us doesn’t have trauma these days? Raise your hand. I’d like to know, and I’d like to applaud you.

Because life is fucking weird. Aside from all the messed up shit and unpr*cedented times. It’s all just one big game of Groundhog Day, if you ask me, and a lot of us haven’t noticed because we’re too busy trying to make it stop.

I’m currently thinking about all the tabs I have open on my computer. Articles to read, scripts made public for awards season, recipes, Twitter, movie reviews, Wiki pages about whoever the latest movie I watched is about…I’m waiting for time to stop moving for a hot second so I can catch up and clean my browser. “Oh, this weekend I’ll make the time,” we tell ourselves. But sorry, I need to run to the post office, go grocery shopping, get my oil changed, dust my blinds (look, allergies are a bitch)…and oh look, my finger involuntarily pressed play on Gilmore Girls so I guess we’re watching that again instead of the endless and ever-growing list of unwatched titles on my list. Or maybe, since I can’t stop thinking about the plane parts falling from the sky, a Lost rewatch is in order. Or, to pull deeper into my subconscious, is Flight 29 Down streaming anywhere?

I’ve said it a hundred times: time is an illusion. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still feel so real that my skin can sense the ticking of the clock on the wall.

We’re coming up on one whole year of “lockdown.” A year from when I woke up in Paris to a travel ban and made a mad rush for the airport—I didn’t know much about COVID then. I wasn’t worried. How clueless of me! My, my, how things can change in a moment. And yet……..feel exactly the same. It’s strange, this year that we’ve had to adapt and grow and panic and feel far too much. How quiet it can be from inside my room but if I step outside, the evidence is screaming. Stickers on the ground, open signs, closed signs, ads for masks and testing sites.

I wish I could scream and be heard. Not that anyone needs to hear my voice, but anything to take us out of this weird reality. I guess that’s what books are for. To escape and inspire. There are plenty of people out there significantly smarter and better than I am to listen to.

When I wake up tomorrow, I’m going to be doing this same thing all over again, this monotonous routine, and I’m going to try and make it special. Listen to a new album, drink tea instead of coffee, wear pants instead of sweats (I can dream, can’t I?). Will it make a difference? I sure as hell hope so.

How did Bill Murray do it again?