Does anyone else feel like every year is like the movie 'Groundhog Day'? Same holidays, same birthdays, same work week, etc

The solution for this is in the movie itself: take up a new hobby, improve on it as far as you can, make each same-y day worth being lived, add to your routine and your skill set

but that sounds like a lot of work
- It doesn't have to be. Every morning do one push up, and one push up only. After 20 days, up it to two push ups.
- That's where I get stuck.
  
  Tbf Bill Murray's character had infinite iterations. Like, there are probably a bunch where he was just lying in bed, a few where he murdered the entire town, a few where he rolled around in his own feces.
Been doing that for a few years now. Pretty soon all those hobbies just become more of the same background noise. I have nothing more to show for life, but I do have a lot of expensive clutter and knowledge that no one wants me to share.
- I think hobbies by itself isn’t the right advice. Practicing chess, photography, or guitar alone in your house isn’t going to feel less monotonous. The next step is to join a chess club, organize a photo walk, find some people to jam on the guitar with. There’s always new things to explore within hobbies when other people are involved.

Assuming you don’t have any mental health issues make sure you make every day worth living.

If you do have mental health issues you should probably get that looked at by a professional.

If you feel like life is a drag, and you dislike it, change it.

Try a new sport, build that hobby project you’ve always wanted, buy a motorcycle, plan a boardgame night with friends family, try that fetish you’ve been eyeing your whole life.

Don’t be a passenger in your own life.

Ever since the 2020 lockdown professional help has been impacted, with few openings available.

This sucks especially for those of us with more chronic issues (I was showing signs at seven years old) because finding a patient-therapist fit is a process. A lot of patients need specific care, and the professional sector is not... well... professional enough to treat without letting their own opinions get in the way. So it sucks to discover your psychiatrist is anti-gay when you are as gay as an opera in Paris.

There's also the matter that US insurance only covers short term mental health care at best, like ten sessions when it takes at least a few years (so 200 sessions) to affect significant change, or get enough symptom management skills to not feel like making a public mess every goddamn day.

So, while it'd be super keen if all of us truly gone fishing types were able to get comprehensive care with a psychiatrist who cares and a psychotherapist who actually gets us and isn't trying to surrepititiously push Southern Baptism Jesus on her patients, this is far, far, far from a realistic goal for anyone in the near future, unless they have rich benefactors.

And the problem with rich benefactors is they are easily swayed to toss their gay-as-love-letters-in-the-1890s relative into an illegal conversion therapy work camp.

It's starting to. I think for me at least it's because I'm missing checkpoints in life. Every year used to be its own well-defined column of paint on a canvas but ever since I started working, the last few columns have felt like one giant smear.

I don't like where I've ended up so been trying to make my own goals and hobbies but it takes so much more effort than when most goals were planned for you in school. Perhaps something to add to the New Year's resolutions...

My life has been falling apart. Divorce, unemployment, dying pets, friendships falling off, fights with relatives. There are new disasters every year so it never feels stale.

I can relate to this. My career and my home life has fallen apart this year, after finally thinking I was pretty secure in life. I'm getting ready to (probably) end up homeless again, lose my 450k house, lose my kids. But hey sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and roll with it, at least I won't have this crushing weight of drama on my shoulders anymore!

I hope you figure out how to live more easily as well... life is too short to spend it stressed & depressed!
- Thanks, buddy. This is a good perspective to have. Hope our new years are better than the last!

Well, that's how a calendar works, I mean there's Monday every 7 days

As you get older, it speeds up too!

I recognize it's not quite New Years, but soon it will feel like I turned around and, crap! How is it 4th of July already?

I read something interesting about this before, the gist of it was that it's because as you get older, each year is a smaller percent of your life. At 10, the last year was 1/10 of your life, so it's longer. At 40, last year was 1/40 of your life, so naturally it went by quicker. It's one of those things you don't really think about but when you do it makes sense
- There is also less memorable significant changes/events in your life. Think about all the memorable firsts or unique events and schedule changes that you had in your teens/early 20's.
  
  A new grade every year in education, new teachers, new students, learning to drive, first drinks, first relationship, first apartment, how many shitty jobs you left for a "better one?".
  
  Then compare it to the lfe as you get older. Same job or similar job. Same people for decades. Same house, same favorite restaurants, etc..
  
  Your brain isn't going to remember the month you spent staring at an excel spreadsheets the same way. It's going to lump that month together as "boring shit to mostly forget".

Try being housebound - you don't even get a change of scenery...

(edit to be clear: I relate, not trying to minimise or one-up others' experience)

2013 is when everything started to turn into shit for me. But even then, it was still a very unique year, and every year in the rest of the decade still felt pretty cool to experience despite being different flavors of hell.

And then the 2020s happened. Everything basically turned into a monotone greyscale life with even the slightest hint of smiles sucked out of my life.

Further evidence that the world ended in 2012, and its just a slower process than John Cusack movies led us to believe.

Yeah. I think that's part of getting older and having some degree of stability. It's not like grade school where new stuff is constantly coming at you

the last four years have felt like that every week

That's not how it works. When you're stuck in a Groundhog Day, you're the only one that notices.

As someone who works from home every day feels like the same day.

The wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan both earned the nickname Groundhog Day in reference to the 1993 Harold Ramis comedy since tours of duty got to be extremely routine, The Suck, day in and day out, so yes, looking at our lives, especially if you are in a toxic job that leaves you too hungry to quit and too exhausted to watch for better opportunities, using the term Groundhog Day to describe the day-after-day monotony is appropriate.

And the thing is, while we are quick to blame the individual for failing to find ambition to achieve a better life, it is a game of musical chairs. It is competing with your fellow citizen, that in order for your life to be made better through better work or better pay, others have to be left behind to do the job you are leaving. And more still are left without a job, to rot and be disregarded as a homeless burden on the system. The society of the US intentionally underserves the common family so that those who have jobs can be abused and are too afraid to blow whistles.

In September 2022, Mahsa Amini was attacked by the morality police for a hijab infraction and killed. When the state responded to the protests with violence, the people responded with riots, eventually setting fire to government buildings and attacking police stations as the agents of state were determined to respond only by escalating with greater violence. Amini's death wasn't the only matter, but just the latest in a long run of government failures.

Eventually, when enough people in the US suffer, we may turn violent too. And to suggest violent revolution or to suggest reprisal for wrongdoing by law enforcement or state agents will be unspeakable and taboo, until the very hour nothing short of of dissolution of the established norm will suffice.

I can't say when that time will come, or even if it will affect mass change, or whether this is a right course of action, just that this is how the shit seems to go down: We suffer until we can't stand it anymore. Lather, rinse, repeat with every New Boss until we see they're all the Same As The Old Boss.

Beyond that, humankind hasn't ever tread very far. Not that we know from history, at least.

Damn, well said.

BING!