One of my parents’ all-time favorite movies is Groundhog Day, and it ranks pretty high up there on my list as well. We watched it tonight, and so, unsurprisingly, I felt a lot like Bill Murray when I checked some other people’s blogs tonight.
Several of my favorite people are just scattered about the globe right now, and all of them have this amazing ability to not update their blogs at all. And since the most recent post on every one I checked was still from the first week of December (or November… or September) I could just hear “I Got You, Babe” as I went through the checklist of favorite (unupdated) blogs.
Then I thought to myself… “Mine looks pretty much the same.”
Now granted, I’m in Elizabeth City, I’ve been working my tail off the last couple of weeks between practicing various instruments and putting musical instruments into the hands of seemingly every middle schooler from Hertford to Manteo. But I’ve just been totally slack on my writing, both my own stuff and my more public face of dannypeck.net (/facebook).
So thanks to watching Groundhog Day all the way through for the first time in many years, here’s what I’d do if I had a day to live over. And over. And over…
1. Learn piano. And flute. And pan flute. And charango. I’d probably brush up on a lot of other instruments I play as well, starting with the guitar. I’ll probably never be Carlos Santana level. But repeating the same day over and over, I think I’d at least try. And I’d resort to music lessons much faster than Phil Connors (and before Sciuridaedicide).
2. Take up ice sculpting. I promise I’ll stop stealing from Harold Ramis after this one. But I mean, really? How many people can even do that? It’s gotta be pretty lucrative.
3. Reading. I think if I lived to be 300, I could start reading now and not stop till I died and still not have hardly put a dent in my personal reading list.
4. See how many languages I could learn. If nothing else, I’d finally know what Paul was laughing at in that Shyamalan movie, and I could exponentially increase the length of my reading list.
5. Travel. Bill Murray was stuck in Punxsutawney, PA because of a blizzard. Hopefully I’d have better weather. If you’re going to wake up in the same bed in the same place every morning, why not at least make it a challenge for God or fate or Harold Ramis to put me back in bed and make it to Ecuador or India or Japan by 5:59 am.
I could keep this list going. I could fill it up with more interesting, meaningful, or at least funny things than these. But I’m going to return to The Epic of South America and simply attempt to live out number 3 instead. Merry belated Christmas, Happy early New Year, and a prosperous Groundhog Day.
