Hope Springs

"Blue Monday, how I hate Blue Monday,
Got to work like a slave all day.
Here come Tuesday; oh, hard Tuesday;
I'm so tired; got no time to play.


"Here come Wednesday, I'm beat to my socks;
My gal calls, got to tell her that I'm out.
'Cause Thursday is a hard-working day,
And Friday I get my pay."


Fats Domino & Fabian, 1957

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

I've learned today that I've been living consecutive months of January since 2005 in complete oblivion and have missed six "Blue Mondays" already. If this past Monday (January 17) was not actually Blue Monday for 2011, and opposing viewpoints are correct that this upcoming Monday (January 24) will be Blue Monday for 2011, I'll see what I've been missing.

All I know about last Monday is that it was Martin Luther King Day, and all the banks, post offices, and government folks had the day off. Nothing "blue" about that, huh?!

Meredith went back to UCCS on Sunday afternoon after a month-long semester break; but, classes didn't start until Tuesday morning because of Martin Luther King Day. She seemed pretty happy about that.

I didn't have the day off because the day is not observed as a holiday in our company; and, I hadn't planned to take the day off on a day when I had so much catching-up to do from the big trek to The Ville anyway. But, I was just so happy to be back in the land of snow plows and mag chloride, I would have missed the point.

So, now I'm wondering if the rest of you were busy being Blue while I was busy being Busy. And, Oblivious.

Blue is my favorite color. I'm not amused that everybody wants to hijack the most beautiful color in God's palette for their own PR purposes.

Yep, that's right. This "Blue Monday" thing apparently got its start when Porter Novelli (a public relations firm with which I have actually worked in another industry) got an idea to create a campaign around a trumped-up depressing day, and concocted a press release that was signed by hoodwinked (and compensated) "scholars" declaring that, roughly, the third Monday of January is officially Blue Monday. At some point after the lead academician had exhausted the news value of Blue Monday, he subsequently solved for the "happiest" day of the year on behalf of an ice cream company. You'll be shocked to learn that this celebration occurs at a point after the Northern Hemisphere tilts back in the general direction of the sun. In other words, June.

I don't know - I'm just telling you what I read on Wikipedia.

My favorite part of the story is the formula by which Blue Monday is calculated. It's roughly the product of (W + D - d) x T to the Q divided by M x N (with a little sub "a"). W is the Weather. D is not defined; d is Debt. T is Time since Christmas, and Q is time since failing our New Years resolutions. M is low motivational levels, and N with the little sub "a" is the feeling of a need to take action.

All of that leads to either January 17 or January 24 in 2011. If it was January 17, I failed to kvetch sufficiently and feel that my opportunity to mourn my condition has been unfairly withheld from me by lack of sufficient news coverage of this landmark date. Yes, journalism is truly dead.

If it's January 24, then I only have the weekend remaining to prepare for this day of gloom.

I see by the Weather Channel app on my personal Blackberry that Monday, January 24, 2011 is scheduled to be one of the 300 days of sunshine we are promised each year by the Denver Chamber of Commerce. If you've ever been to Denver on one of these days, you know that it is absolutely impossible -- I mean, ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE -- to be depressed. The blazing glare of that fireball in the sky known as the Sun fairly sears your retina into believing that God's palette is bathed in a rose-colored layer of happiness. And, barring a genuine tragedy in your life, you have no shot at attaining the appropriate level of unhappiness that I suspect is required to truly leverage the potential of Blue Monday.

Nope. I think Monday, January 24, 2011 is already booked for "Blue Heaven."