Again, been awhile. No excuses this time. Just diving back in and try to be consistent.

Anyway, most everyone has see the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray and Andi McDowell. Well, I watched it awhile back and let me tell you, the movie has a totally different meaning for me now. If you haven’t seen the movie, I HIGHLY recommend you see it. If it’s on your “to watch list” (don’t lie, we all have one), please forgive me for giving away spoilers. It won’t ruin the movie for you, trust me. Anyhoo, for those who have seen it, you remember Bill Murray’s character was a weatherman and he was basically an asshole. In walks Andi McDowell’s character and she’s sweet, free-spirited, and has a zest for life. Of course Bill Murray’s character is smitten with her - why wouldn’t he be? On their way to see Punxsutawney Phil (no lie, had to Google that name for spelling) - a trip Andi is extremely excited about, Bill pretty much tells her it’s all BS, and it’s the same thing year after year, day in, day out. They end the conversation with Andi basically telling him if you don’t like something, change it.

Then Bill wakes up the next morning on Groundhog Day and persists to live that day throughout the movie, trying to get into Andie’s pants and failing miserably. Until he starts to grow into a decent human being and make changes in himself. He makes his mistakes, corrects them the following “day” and learns from his experiences and grows. He sees the pitfalls the day had brought him previously, and sidesteps or ignores them altogether. But, not before he gets to the point of trying to end his life for a week of Groundhog Days 0 even trying to take out the groundhog itself - just to end the continuing spiral. In the end, as all Hollywood films do, the protagonist gets the girl and wins. Yay everyone, roll credits.

It’s a movie we all can relate to just in the simple fact that we see our lives as Bill Murray’s character: wake up, go to work, come home, sleep, wake up, go to work, come home, sleep…rinse and repeat. It’s boring, unfulfilling, draining and not what any of us expected our lives to be. There has to be more than this. We are restless. We are bitter. We are angry. We are resentful. And we don’t like feeling this way. We don’t like what we are becoming, so we change - we do what we think we should do, or what people tell us to do - but it doesn’t alleviate the feeling of “is this it?”

We aren’t happy. We are semi-content, which isn’t too bad - it’s better than being resentful and bitter, but we still feel restless. We still feel angry. It’s just gotten easier to bury those emotions and not let them come to the surface. We continue on, frustrated that the changes we made aren’t working. We’re still basically just going through he motions like we had done before. We make more changes, hoping SOMETHING will yield fruit, but nothing does.

Until we find ourselves behind the steering wheel of a truck with a groundhog we stole hoping to end our misery. This is the darkest moment any of us will ever know. The moment when, filled with despair, we decide to end our life; because how much of a life is it? We wake up, go to work, come home, sleep and do it all over again the next day. We aren’t living as much as we are existing. We are literally just waiting to die, as if our entire life has been nothing but hospice. Then, something snaps within us and instead of CHANGING, we GROW. As did Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. to be sure, we’ll stumble along our way, but as long as we don’t lose our way, we will continue to grow.

For me, the movie Groundhog Day was a simplified explanation of what spirituality is, what the beginnings of an “awakening” is. It’s the realization that there’s more to life than what we’ve programmed ourselves to do and live. It’s the frustration of knowing you’re doing what you’re “supposed” to do, but you still feel empty. It’s the depression of feeling it’s all hopeless and life is bullshit. What’s happening is your soul, your subconscious, your higher self - whatever you want to call it - is making itself known to your conscious self, your ego - whatever you wanna call it. You don’t want to let go of everything you think you know to be true, everything you were programmed to know and believe in because if you start questioning it, what else is there to believe in?

That is when you start searching for answers and embark on the path of awakening - growing into the person whatever higher power you believe in created you to be. You will have headaches. You will feel tired all of the time. You will feel nauseous from time to time. You’ll feel anxious and depressed. You will feel hungry, but won’t want to eat. Your dreams, when you do get some sleep, will be more visionary than just random pictures you forget about when you wake up. You will remember them. You’ll wake up from sleep at random times in the middle of the night. You’ll go to the doctor and after umpteen bloodtests, scans and diagnostic procedures, nothing will be found to be the cause of any of your ailments. You’ll pray prayers that yield you nothing. You’ll go through your holy book for answers to find none. You’ll talk to people about what you’re going through, getting a plethora of avenues to go down, none giving you the answer you’re searching for.

You’ll feel lost You keep doing the same thing day in and day out, but you feel like you should be doing more and you don’t know what that more is.

You will feel alone. No one seems to understand what you’re going through. Science and religion, which have always had the answers in the past, doesn’t have a clue or isn’t giving you much comfort.

As you trudge day to day, something will snap inside of you. The feeling of “ENOUGH!” screams in your head and you act on it - be it leaving an unfulfilling job with a toxic employer; standing up for yourself against a bully, or cutting ties with a toxic person in your life; seeing something on social media and falling down a rabbit hole. SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN to make you realize, just like Bill Murray’s character did in Groundhog Day, that for you to be truly happy, it’s not enough to make surface changes like moving to a new location, or finding new love. You have to grow, and growth can be painful - excruciatingly so at times. Just like when you were a child and sprouted 6 inches in a summer right before you went into 5th grade.

Thus begins your journey on the path of knowing your soul, your most true self. It’s the path I’m on and let me tell you something: it’s not a path for the faint of heart. It’s hard. It’s lonely - family and friends who aren’t on the same path won’t understand. It’s painful - sometimes you have to leave those you’ve met on this path behind so you can continue forward. It’s scary - some of those dreams are totally fucked up and some days I feel like I was better off not remembering them.

You will have to face things about your4self you probably don’t want to face. Your darkest of shadows can be terrifying. You will cry heart-wrenching tears of anguish as you heal. You will feel a tranquil peace once you accept things.

At least that’s what I’ve read. Oh, I haven’t accepted shit just yet. I’m still finding my way, trying to uncover traumas and figure out why I am the way I am. I want to outgrow things I don’t like ab out myself; my paranoia, my insanely overblown sense of fairness, my inability to forgive a lie - no matter how inconsequential it is; my stubbornness - that’s my biggest downfall, really.

It doesn’t help I’m a solid Taurus, so growing out of my mule-headed tendencies is probably going to be a lifelong growth process.

Yay me…

I want to know why I have my other attributes: I give my heart readily and freely - almost too freely, but I don’t want to change that about myself. I try to be kind to every person I interact with. Even those I completely and utterly despise - but I’ll match and surpass your dumbass energy if you come at me telling me you know I don’t like you (Blondie, you can HAVE HIM!). I want to know why I see colors around some people, but not others; why I can sense things that aren’t there (I swear my workplace has a ghost that keeps popping the cups out of their sleeves and grabbing my ponytail - asshat doesn’t even have the decency of taking me to dinner first…); why I like animals more than people - and it can’t be because people are generally assholes and animals are cut and cuddly cuz my chickens are most CERTAINLY not cuddly, but I’d rather spend an hour with them than with people.

Fucked up, I know, but there it is.

Anyhoo, there you have it. Groundhog Day = spirituality. And I’m frigging Bill Murray. But I ain’t gonna try and kill a groundhog. They’re cuuute! I’m just gonna try and grow and maybe find out what the fuck God, the Great Spirit, the Universe - whomever is in charge - wants me to do once I’ve grown cuz to be honest, being human…it’s a frigging mess.