Blue Monday...........

Apparently today is statistically the most depressing day of the year.  Some academic with too much time on their hands has calculated that the third Monday in January is the worst day in the calendar, due to a combination of factors - festive anti-climax, Christmas bills landing on the doormat with a weighty thud, miserable grey damp weather, long dark evenings and a seemingly endless wait for spring.


I'll go along with that.  I hate January and February with a passion.  They have nothing at all to recommend them and if I could only drum up the energy and enthusiasm I would start up a "Let's Dump January and February" campaign.  It would be so much more sensible just to go from New Year's Day straight to March. 


I could quite happily hibernate for these two months.  Make a lovely safe, warm, cosy nest and do my world famous dormouse impression for the duration.

However, needs must, and with a fair looming in less than 5 weeks I should be gainfully employed in the workroom, ticking off items on my burgeoning 'to do' list.


Today is most definitely a day for sitting right in front of my SAD lamp.  Not only do I need my serotonin levels boosted, I need all the light I can get in order to work.  It is so dark and gloomy outside that I will have to have every light in the workroom on.

Which is a very lot of lights.


And will it NEVER stop raining?  Our garden is black with damp and mould, everything is squelchy underfoot and a feeling of pervasive ooziness fills the very air.  The blue skies I lauded yesterday made a ridiculously brief appearance, and even before I'd finished my last post the grey gloom had closed in and remained in situ since.  

Spring feels a VERY long way off....


And in case you think I'm making all this up.....

Blue Monday was first identified by Cliff Arnall, formerly of Cardiff University, marking the symbolic time in January when people suffer from a series of combined depressive effects.

Blue Monday was devised using the following mathematical formula:

The model was broken down using six immediately identifiable factors; weather (W), debt (d), time since Christmas (T), time since failing our new year’s resolutions (Q), low motivational levels (M) and the feeling of a need to take action (Na).

The formula calculates that Monday 18 January 2010 is the worst day of the year, when the Christmas glow has faded away, New Year’s resolutions have been broken, cold Winter weather has set in and credit card bills will be landing on doormats across the land – whilst the January pay-cheque is still some way away.

 
Incidentally, if any of you can explain in simple, layman's terms, how that formula = 3rd Monday in January do let me know.  I'm severely algebraically challenged.