Top 10 reasons you’re depressed today: A grumpy guide to Blue Monday

A little late but still ...

Monday 21 Jan 2013 8:30 am Life & Style

Blue Monday is the most depressing day of the year (Picture: File)

Today is Blue Monday – officially the most depressing day of the year, as sponsored by several companies who want to try and make you feel better. Far be it for me to point out that we shouldn’t make light of mental health issues because the PR team for some pharmaceutical company has told us to, so how about I just remind you of all the reasons you’re probably completely and utterly down in the dumps today?
1. It’s cold
Some call it ‘The Big Freeze’; some call it ‘The Great Chill’; others simply call it ‘January’. Either way, it’s cold at the moment. At some point today you will probably find yourself spending money you don’t have on a hot drink just to stave off the hypothermia. When you get to the counter at the faceless coffee chain (which probably pays tax at a lower rate than you do), the best you can do is paw ineffectually at the coins in your wallet because the cold air has done away with your dexterity. After three minutes of hot chocolate-induced bliss, you must return to the outdoors, where your core body temperature will plummet once again.
2. It’s snowing
As if the cold wasn’t bad enough, it’s snowing, too. The novelty of snow wore off when you were 14 and now you see that blanket of white for exactly what it is: a massive, shoe-ruining, ankle-endangering, turd-coloured Slush Puppie. January 21st was already the worst day ever out of all the days and now it’s tripping you up in the street and making you late for work, too.
3. You’re poor
You probably don’t have a job and if you do, it’s almost definitely poorly paid, because you haven’t had a salary increase in four years. With the present-slinging festivities of Christmas not yet erased from your memory or your bank statement, a Happy Meal is now beyond your means and that bloke from Wonga.com is coming round this afternoon to take away your children. 
4.  You look awful
It’s a well-known fact that everyone looks like s*** in winter, so at least you’re not alone on this one. But that’s little consolation when you catch sight of yourself in the mirror and see a wan, drawn and exhausted-looking face staring back at you. The ‘winter you’ has dry skin, chapped lips and the distinct look of someone who ate over a thousand segments of Terry’s Chocolate Orange at Christmas. Time to detox…
5. You’re hungry
It’s the beginning of a new year, so in a stunning show of originality, you’ve opted to try and lose a few pounds. Whichever diet you’ve picked – low-carb; low-fat; caveman; blood type; cotton wool; tapeworm – you’re now a few weeks in and starting to feel a bit like Anne Hathaway preparing for a role, but without the promise of $10m and Oscar glory at the end of the tunnel. Suffering from perilously low blood sugar levels, you find yourself ill-equipped to deal with the cold and even less tolerant of all the other crap January 21st has to throw at you.
6. You hate your job
You’ve struggled into work in what were – as we’ve already established – extremely adverse weather conditions and what greets you when you get to your desk? A mountain of work that you know contributes nothing to society and barely pays your bills anyway. Your boss is a deluded, slave-master-adjacent sadist, whose social skills clearly stopped developing in early childhood and your colleagues are no fun because they’re just as depressed as you are. You’d try and make your escape, but January is a notoriously bad time to go job-hunting.
7. You’re a failure
Just three short weeks ago, you were full of hope for the year ahead. Emotionally buttressed by an arsenal of resolutions and goals, you felt great about 2013. For you – like for everyone – it was set to be a year of affirmative action and positive change. But by the time Blue Monday rolls around, reality has set in. Dry January only lasted until the first weekend of the month, you’ve spent more money than you care to think about and the rest of your resolutions are such a distant memory you don’t even know how many you’ve failed at. But you’re pretty sure it was a lot. By now you can be in no doubt that you’re going to spend this year being just as lazy/fat/drunk/jobless as you were in 2012.
8. You’re alone
You survived the Christmas period as a singleton. You survived having no one significant to kiss at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve and the endless stream of Facebook profile pictures featuring smug couples wearing matching festive jumpers, blinded by love and deaf to the laughs of others. The first few weeks of January brought with them a huge sigh of relief, as you realised you’d won back your right to insouciant singledom, no longer facing awkward Yuletide questions about why you haven’t settled down yet. But now it’s January 21st and a terrifying truth has dawned on you: Valentine’s Day is just around the corner.
9. You’re not alone
You quite liked your significant other over the festive period. You laughed; you snuggled; you drank until you no longer recognised each other. But now it’s mid-January. The magic of Christmas has worn off and that stuffed dead rabbit he/she bought you is starting to look a little creepy on your bedside table. You look over at your partner’s face on the pillow and realise it’s a more pallid, more bloated and less attractive version of the one that was there last August. You feel like you might want to end it, but you can’t, because a terrifying truth has dawned on you: Valentine’s Day is just around the corner…
10. You’re sober
To top it all off, you’re going through all this without so much as a drop of Merlot. You signed up to take part in some godawful ‘Dryathlon’ scheme at the beginning of the month and even though you’ve only adhered to the rules in the loosest possible sense, you’re feeling deprived of the only thing that made you feel better about January.