You ever wonder if you could learn valuable life lessons from getting drunk and singing a bad rendition of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in a bar packed with people?
Rob Sheffield thinks so. In his book, Turn Around Bright Eyes: A Karaoke Journey of Starting Over, Falling in Love, and Finding Your Voice, Sheffield has this to say about the repetition of daily life:
You have to walk that dog every day, with no mileage credit for what you did yesterday. Work doesn’t get finished, and neither does play. You start over every day…you fight the sensation of getting overwhelmed by the repetition of things. You build up some momentum but you don’t get a climax. You don’t even know if you’ve done your day’s work right, because nothing’s ever really done. That’s very disconcerting to me.
When this year started, I would have agreed. The mundane banality of everyday existence sounds disconcerting to me too. I’d love nothing more than to be in a bar packed with people, singing my guts out, just for the sake of breaking up all this monotony.
But six months deep into the pandemic and having racked up quite a few days that look all too similar, I have to say, there’s something to this whole Groundhog Day style of life.
joshua chamberlain 