Deja Vu, Again

Today, thanks to one of those circumstances that reminds you that television work is not the same as work in corporate America, I found myself not at work, but at home. While I could have taken the opportunity to eat and to nap, given the proximity of the couch and the refrigerator, I actually made myself quite productive, doing some at-home editing and dubbing, with a bit of writing on the side. But when 3:00 rolled around, I was out the door heading for a school bus stop, and from then until about three hours later, I was suddenly in a world that seemed both foreign and strangely familiar. I was reliving my life from two years ago, courtesy of an unscheduled day off, and a little déjà vu.
 
We like to believe that each day of our lives is different, and largely, they are, certainly when it comes to the specific details. But shift some of the details, and it is possible to feel as though you are repeating things, and take out some of the pieces that balance you now, and it's not too hard to be transported back to another time. Today, I found myself walking paths that I had walked weekly two years ago. I found myself keeping the schedule that ran my life two years ago. And from time to time, it was hard not to feel a bit of the desperation I felt two years ago. For, while today might be a blip, today's activities were just like the ones from two years ago, when I was looking for work. Today's journeys were just like the ones I took daily in the days of "no babysitter, just at-home Mom." Today's conversations even felt as though I had been sent back in time.
 
Obviously, even as we think we are reliving things "already seen," circumstances are different. So what I experienced today, déjà vu-ish as it was, was not a return to that other time, but simply a reminder--an uncanny reminder--of it. Given the unpredictability of television, there may be a few more reminders tomorrow. And perhaps reminders are not such a bad thing. Sometimes, in seeing what we've already seen, we are reminded of just how far we've actually come.