Groundhog Blog

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day; it's also (approximately) my blog's first anniversary. Let me try to connect the two.

I'll celebrate tomorrow by watching, about the 30th time, the Bill Murray movie of that name. Groundhog Day is my second favorite movie--exiting the theater on first viewing, I said "It's perfect; I wouldn't change a word." I agree with Jonah Goldberg, in the current NR on dead tree, the film is "brilliant as both comedy and moral philosophy." As most will recall, the Murray character relives February 2nd over and over. And the question posed is: "why the day repeats itself and why it stops repeating at the end?"

When Phil Connors arrives in Punxsutawney, he’s a perfect representative of the Seinfeld generation: been-there-done-that. When he first realizes he’s not crazy and that he can, in effect, live forever without consequences — if there’s no tomorrow, how can you be punished? — he indulges his adolescent self. He shoves cigarettes and pastries into his face with no fear of love-handles or lung cancer. “I am not going to play by their rules any longer,” he declares as he goes for a drunk-driving spree. He uses his ability to glean intelligence about the locals to bed women with lies. . .

Still, Conners schemes to bed Rita with the same techniques he used on other women, and fails, time and again. When he realizes that his failures stem not from a lack of information about Rita’s desires but rather from his own basic hollowness, he grows suicidal. Or, some argue, he grows suicidal after learning that all of the material and sexual gratification in the world is not spiritually sustaining. . .

The point is that Connors slowly realizes that what makes life worth living is not what you get from it, but what you put into it. He takes up the piano. He reads poetry — no longer to impress Rita, but for its own sake. He helps the locals in matters great and small, including catching a boy who falls from a tree every day. “You never thank me!” he yells at the fleeing brat. He also discovers that there are some things he cannot change, that he cannot be God. The homeless man whom Connors scorns at the beginning of the film becomes an obsession of his at the end because he dies every Groundhog Day. Calling him “pop” and “dad,” Connors tries to save him but never can.

By the end of the film, Connors is no longer obsessed with bedding Rita. He’s in love with her, without reservation and without hope of his affection being requited. Only in the end, when he completely gives up hope, does he in fact “get” the woman he loves. And with that, with her love, he finally wakes on February 3, the great wheel of life no longer stuck on Groundhog Day. As NR’s own Rick Brookhiser explains it, “The curse is lifted when Bill Murray blesses the day he has just lived. And his reward is that the day is taken from him. Loving life includes loving the fact that it goes.”

I've reinvented myself several times between childhood and middle-age. Geek-to-science-to-law-to-politics-to-writing doesn't have the appeal of "Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance" (and might be more strained than the slogan printed under my blogname above), but each new pole-star felt both real and right. Indeed, this blog began with a different URL and focus, but I prefer the new-and-improved.

Blogging is hard work--because thinking and writing take time. Andrew Sullivan, who announced his "hiatus" today, captured the notion:

The ability to keep on top of almost everything on a daily and hourly basis just isn't compatible with the time and space to mull over some difficult issues in a leisurely and deliberate manner. Others might be able to do it. But I've tried and failed.

I'm nowhere near as prolific as Sullivan, but I agree it's exhausting. And blogging is on top of a rewarding personal life and paid employment. How I'd prefer the perspective of pajamas! Alas, contrary to silly CBS spokesmen, work comes first.

I didn't come here to bury my blog; only to say that I've experienced blogging as a Groundhog Day process of self-improvement. My interests have broadened, my writing's better, and my address book -- dangerously slimmed after excising the "blame America first" crowd -- is bigger. I won a Wizbang award and, as a consequence, am too widely read to qualify in that category next year. I've met more people through the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem and Technorati than I thought possible. Readers are what's kept me going. Oh, yeah, and the occasional Insta-lanche or Corner-lanche. . .

No, I'm not quitting. I'll see my shadow tomorrow--locking-in another year of blogging. If my second year's only half as good as the first, I'll be grateful--and better for it. Thanks to you.

(favorite movie provided on request)