‘Blue Monday’

For most of the globe, the year 2021 hasn’t had the best start. I only have to write the words ‘unprecedented’, ‘the new normal’ or ‘social distancing’ in order for you to get the gist. As someone that has suffered with some mental health issues in the past, I have learnt to look at the positives and try not carry the weight of the world on my shoulders — but it’s been bloody tough these last few months.

The idea of ‘Blue Monday’ was first conjured up by a travel company back in 2004, who decided the best way to get customers buying holidays was to emphasise how sad and depressing the month of January can be, more specifically, the third Monday.

Today at work, when I logged into Teams and fired up my webcam for the 4954740237th time, I was greeted by some sombre teammates, chatting about ‘Blue Monday’ and how cold and wet everything is. And this got me thinking; this Monday isn’t different to any other Monday. It is still as cold and wet as it was last week and will be for at least the next month. It is still January and we still haven’t been paid. Despite this, I am still thankful everything single morning that I get to wake up, use my legs to walk to the bathroom, use my hands to brush my teeth and get the feeling of a hot shower on my back, I get to taste my yummy coffee and eat my yummy breakfast and all throughout this lovely routine, I have a fabulous brain telling me how to do everything. And in using my fabulous brain I realised that this is all just a self-fulling prophecy, if you tell yourself today is going to be a bad day, it will, because you think everything is going to be bad, and your negative actions will in turn dictate how your day pans out.

My boyfriend of five years is always telling me how lucky I am, how everything just falls into place and always goes my way. I always tell him that it isn’t luck, it’s the way you think.

I do sometimes miss the bus, I am sometimes late for things, but if you put things into perspective and not them ruin the bigger picture, ie the rest of the day, they won’t. We live and then we die, so you may as well make the most of what happens in between.

Long story short, if you wanted it to, every day could be a Blue Monday, but it could also be a yellow Monday, or maybe just a mediocre green Monday. It is always harder than it seems, sometimes I’m scared of my own brain but regardless, you can’t always control what happens to you, but you can always control how you feel about it. You always have the power to decide what type of day it is going to be.