How to Break Up Time When Every Day Feels Like ‘Groundhog Day’
When you’re stuck at home, escaping monotony means getting creative
A few weeks into my family’s quarantine, it started to hit me just how much every day felt like a carbon copy of the one before: wake up, make coffee, juggle the demands of my work and kids, remember to eat, go to bed, repeat. Remember that movie Groundhog Day? I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I’m living my own version of Bill Murray’s ordeal. The only difference is that instead of being stuck on a time loop in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, I’m stuck inside the four walls of my suburban home.
In the movie, Murray’s character, a weatherman named Phil Connors, reckons with his endlessly repeating day by eventually sinking into a depression. When a bystander asks him for a weather prediction, he grumbles, “It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be gray, and it’s gonna last you the rest of your life.”
Psychologically speaking, his reaction makes sense: Too much monotony can dull our ability to feel pleasure, a phenomenon sometimes known as the “hedonic treadmill.”
Before the pandemic, we had ways to break up that monotony. A quick trip out of town or an evening at a friend’s house gave us not only variety, but a sense of before and after. A way to punctuate a…
