Fifty Shades Of Blue

According to some, today is Blue Monday. ‘Blue Monday’ is the pseudoscientific name often attributed to the third Monday in January, which is purported to be the most depressing day of the year.

Although obviously complete nonsense, it does hold up to a small amount of scrutiny – Christmas is now long forgotten but the residual weight gain and poverty are still often being felt by many, who are further making themselves miserable by participating in ill-advised fads such as Dry January, or Veganuary (I’ve obviously got nothing against teetotalers or vegans but pretending that adopting either lifestyle for 31 days a year is going to make the blindest bit of difference to anything is a strange conviction to hold). Plus it’s cold outside. Well it is here in the UK. I’m vaguely aware that some of the small number of people who read my blog don’t live in the UK. So it might not be cold where you are.

I can usually be relied upon to be fairly miserable on Blue Monday because I can usually be relied upon to be miserable on most Mondays. I don’t know if I’m significantly more depressed than usual on Blue Monday.

Of course with the benefit of hindsight, to suggest that Blue Monday 2020 was the most depressing day of the year is rather to ignore what happened in the rest of 2020. Indeed the third Monday in January last year was a time of much greater optimism and prosperity. There was enough toilet roll for everyone and while there was talk of a possible pandemic, we all just assumed that meant people suffering and dying somewhere that wasn’t where we lived. So nothing to worry about really.

This year, there is perhaps a case for saying that Blue Monday might be the most depressing day of the year, because the pandemic that was supposed to be done and dusted by Christmas does, in fact, appear to be worse than ever. On the plus side, if today really is the most depressing day of the year then it means everything is going to start getting better from tomorrow.

So in the spirit of unfounded and misplaced optimism, I truly wish you the most miserable and depressing Blue Monday possible.