Blue Monday 2020

Welcome to #BlueMonday2020 or #BlueMonday

If you're wondering what is Blue Monday, you're not alone. A few people have asked me that today. So, here is a bit of information for you on what exactly is blue Monday.

https://www.awarenessdays.com/awareness-days-calendar/blue-monday-2020/

According to Awareness day calendar, this is what blue Monday is all about; The third Monday of January has been awarded the gloomy title due to a combination of post-Christmas blues, cold dark nights and the arrival of unpaid credit card bills.

Apparently, a university professor managed to precisely calculate the most depressing day of the year, using the following formula:

Where 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. ‘D’ is not defined in the release, nor are units.

Supposedly the date was calculated by using many factors, including: weather conditions, debt level (the difference between debt accumulated and our ability to pay), time since Christmas, time since failing our new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and feeling of a need to take action.

However, all may not be as it seems here, as it turns out this was in fact a PR stunt by Sky Travel.

Wiki says: 

This date was published in a press release under the name of Cliff Arnall, at the time a tutor at the Centre for Lifelong Learning, a Further Education centre attached to Cardiff University. Guardian columnist Ben Goldacre reported that the press release was delivered substantially pre-written to a number of academics by public relations agency Porter Novelli, who offered them money to put their names to it.^[3] The Guardian later printed a statement from Cardiff University distancing themselves from Arnall: "Cardiff University has asked us to point out that Cliff Arnall... was a former part-time tutor at the university but left in February."^[4]

Variations of the story have been repeatedly reused by other companies in press releases, with 2014 seeing Blue Monday invoked by legal firms and retailers of bottled water and alcoholic drinks.^[5] Some versions of the story purport to analyse trends in social media posts to calculate the date.^[5]

In 2018, Arnall told The Independent newspaper that it was "never his intention to make the day sound negative", but rather "to inspire people to take action and make bold life decisions". It was also reported that he was working with Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Holidays, having "made it his mission to challenge some of the negative news associated with January and to debunk the melancholic mind-set of "Blue Monday"

And then, wiki says;

Happiest day

Arnall also says, in a press release commissioned by Wall's,^[12] that he has calculated the happiest day of the year – in 2005, 24 June,^[13] in 2006, 23 June,^[14] in 2007, 20 June^[15] in 2009, 19 June,^[16] and in 2010, 18 June.^[17] So far, this date has fallen close to Midsummer in the Northern Hemisphere (June 21 to 24).

I'd just like to say that if you're feeling overwhelmed with debt, sadness, guilt, stress or just blue and down in the dumps, please feel free to talk to me OR talk to someone close to you; a family member, friend, co-worker, anyone. Don't feel like you're alone, you're not.