If Blue Monday is Bullshit, Why Does it Hit Me Hard Each Year?

Inspired by our sister site Broadly, we’re creating the digital version of a bed—This is Fine—a weekly column on mental health that’s a space of comfort, joy, refuge and pleasure.

Human beings love a good narrative and all that new-year-new-me shit. And I am, to state the hopelessly obvious, a human being. Which is why, the end of each year is filled with optimism and hope for me, like it is for many others. Like many others too, it’s filled with looking back and looking ahead, and making resolutions that look kinda similar year on year.

But as the year and festivities end, and once all the chatter on the vices we exploited in the name of a year-ender have died down, there is an unease that settles over and around me. I can feel it in the air. This time around, a couple of friends have already fucked up on their Dry January resolutions, though mine is still going strong (also because it’s the easiest resolution to keep LOL; according to stats published in December of 2016, 63% in the UK make it through Dry Jan). There are zero public holidays in sight (mitigated by the usually reliable Republic Day holiday falling on a Saturday this year—thanks, RD, thanks!), zero celebrations to look forward to; a laughable bank balance thanks to the vices mentioned earlier; and the sinking feeling that this year is turning out to be just like any other, and isn’t the beacon of hope it was looking like while rolling in.

Which is why, the myth of Blue Monday usually looms large in front of my face, aided in parts by the power of suggestion and the media moguls treating it like they treat Hallmark holidays. In case you missed the memo, Blue Monday falls on the third Monday of January, which is—thanks to a complicated-looking formula that is actually press release-driven BS—considered the most depressing day of the year. Invented initially way back in 2005, the idea originally appeared on a press release for a holiday company, getting picked up by news outlets around the UK and destined to be churned out every January since. But even as it turned out to be a clickbait favourite (8 hacks to beat Blue Monday!), digging deeper revealed that the ‘academic’ behind the formula was a part-time tutor, and the formula itself was rubbish. More seriously, by calling it a ‘depressing day’, it makes light of those genuinely suffering from depression, having people believe that this is a one-day predictable event rather than something that can be extremely debilitating and long-term.

Blue Monday, in short, is not a thing. However, what is real, or can be, is the idea that it’s possible to feel down at this time of the year, and that my feelings are not invalid. But noticing my patterns over the past few Januarys, I’ve decided to actively battle the upcoming feeling of hopelessness this year—one of my silly resolutions in itself. I’ve already booked a holiday for February, which is a major thing to look forward to, and which means I have that much more to do through January to be able to enjoy two weeks off work. I am doing a lot of lunches and dinners with friends who are prone to anxiety, and for whom, I’ve sensed post-holiday blues are a trigger for way more serious mental issues. I have set a time limit on my Instagram (did you know about this setting?) to deal with the established pattern between social media and FOMO+anxiety. Instead of feeling the downer that usually follows the extreme highs of December, I am actively looking at the Blue Monday month to hibernate and recharge—at work and in my personal life. Moving the getaway from the end of the year to early February has helped tremendously as well—with far fewer crowds and required monies helping the cause. Most importantly, I am reminding myself that while the new year goals need to be worked on, #NewYearSameOldMe is not bad. Not bad at all.

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