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Column: Richmond News reporter working from home, with the groundhog

So how’s that whole working from home thing workin’ out for ya, eh? At the Richmond News, we are in our fourth week and I have a newfound empathy for Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.
Groundhog
Richmond News reporter Alan Campbell knows how Phil Connors feels in the movie Groundhog Day. Wikipedia image

So how’s that whole working from home thing workin’ out for ya, eh?

At the Richmond News, we are in our fourth week and I have a newfound empathy for Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

For the uninitiated, Murray plays downtrodden and cynical TV weatherman Phil Connors, who’s caught in a time loop, repeatedly reliving the same day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover the Groundhog Day festivities.

Phil wakes up every morning at 6 a.m. with his alarm clock playing Sonny and Cher’s I Got You Babe, before realizing it’s still Feb. 2, with the guest house landlady having the exact same irritating conversation at breakfast.

He walks out onto the street and bumps into an equally annoying old school friend he couldn’t initially recall, then steps into a knee-deep, water-filled sinkhole and so on and so forth.

Realizing there are no consequences for his actions, Phil spends the first several loops indulging in binge eating and drinking, one-night stands, robbery, reckless driving and failed suicide attempts.

While I, thankfully, don’t foresee any of the latter fallout transpiring in my townhouse, I can, however, substitute Sonny and Cher for the shrill of a chirping bird outside my bedroom window every day at 5 a.m.

And I’ll see Phil’s landlady and old school friend and raise it with the soul-draining monotony of convincing my teenage son every day to get out of bed before noon and, wait for it, exercise.

I suspect many of us are in the same corner, trying to navigate a path through increasingly familiar and testing days.

Indeed, a friend recalled the other day how, as a toddler, he used to have underwear with the day of the week on it.

I think some of us would benefit from such a reminder right now, as unattractive as it might be for our spouses.

And how about those conference calls with the office from your basement/bedroom/kitchen? Those are going well, aren’t they?

Well, they were for me until they switched from audio to video. Not a fan of meetings that can drag on — and sucking at poker — my facial expressions tend to give the game away.

It’s not all negative working from home, though, and there are some pros to balance out the cons.

For starters, I get an extra 45 minutes in bed, not having to commute through the tunnel from South Surrey. (Which is needed due to aforementioned chirping bird)

I get to make my own freshly ground, French press coffee and I can easily fit a 5K run in my neighbourhood into the lunchbreak.

The cons, on top of Groundhog Day, is the shopping list of distractions thrown at me of a day (not in any particular order):

Dog wanting to help with my work;

UPS dropping off parcel for one of 11 items ordered online last night;

Shaking head at landscapers blowing dust in backyard or mowing non-existent grass;

Wife asking questions normally reserved for 6 p.m. home time;

Next door’s yappy little dogs, yapping for no apparent reason; and

Spying on the neighbours, wondering if the family members on their patio live with them?

Still, it could be worse. We could be living in one of those ghastly states in the U.S., where lockdown protestors are more likely to be armed with a semi-automatic rifle than a face mask.

Did I mention that Phil broke the groundhog spell in the end?

Let’s hope we can do the same with COVID-19, by keeping our social distance for as long as possible, wherever you may be doing that from.