Today it is Blue Monday, also known as the most depressing day of the year. The Monday of the last full week of January. This is due to a formula devised by British psychologist Cliff Arnall in 2005. It would be a formula that is scientifically justified:
[W = (D-d] x TQ
___________________
M x Na
W is in this formula for the weather, D for debts, d for the monthly salary, T For how long ago was Christmas, Q It is a question of how well the good intentions are maintained. M for the level of motivation and Na for the feeling of taking action. In normal language this means that this day is dark and often gloomy, like this Blue Monday and that Monday is the first working day of the week for many people, also counts. That the level of debt and salary is important to many people, may be clear. The fact that the Christmas holiday is over, and the next holiday is still experienced as far away is often not pré. Under the lines we then see the ability or lack thereof to carry out the good intentions and the motivation to do so. I think it is possible that depending on variables in the formula, the intensity of the feelings of sadness, dejection and melancholy or even depression are worse or less severe. The academic world has its reservations about the formula. In this way, the unit "Time' would be missing from the formula. The formula would also have been designed for payment by a travel agency. The phenomenon Blue Monday, however, appears to be alive. It cannot be translated into Dutch. In Dutch a blue Monday means something else, namely something you have done briefly in the past, such as running as a good intention on 1 January but never again afterwards.
I find Blue Monday an inspiration myself. A few years ago I took a picture of the roof construction at the Central Station in Amsterdam with the second platform underneath without people on it. I made the whole thing negative in Photoshop and then colored turquoise. It gives a cold winter and depressed image. And now a blog about Blue Monday on Monday morning. The color turquoise brings me to the color blue. A color that seems to be experienced by many people as cold, distant and not cheerful.
What can you do on Blue Monday? You can lie in bed or give up on it another way, when you can afford it. After all, it is only one day out of a total of 365 days. Or you could make something nice out of it. Turn your feelings and ideas into a piece of text, a picture or a drawing and see how you feel afterwards.
