You’ve finished all the mince pies, the weather is terrible, Christmas ended up being horribly expensive and most of us are back to the daily grind.
So it wouldn’t come as a surprise if you had started to feel down in the dumps.
But don’t worry, you aren’t alone, because today is Blue Monday – supposedly the most miserable day of the year.
Blue Monday was originally identified in 2005 by academic Cliff Arnall, who thought it fell on the last full week of January.
He calculated the date using a variety of factors including weather conditions, debt levels, failed New Year’s resolutions and the number of days that had elapsed since the end of the Christmas holidays.
But over the past three years, researchers analysed more than 2million tweets posted by Britons in January looking for negative language and phrases indicating a drop in mood.
They found that today, there will be nearly five times the average number of tweets relating to guilt, as people abandon their promises to pursue a healthier lifestyle.
The analysis, by drinks company Upbeat, also found complaints about the weather will be six times higher than usual – and men will feel more miserable than women.
Today has also been dubbed Divorce Monday by legal experts. It is the most popular day of the year for starting divorce proceedings. And January is the busiest divorce month, with twice as many divorces being filed as the second most popular month September.
According to Divorce Depot.co.uk – an online divorce specialist – 1.8million couples will have rowed over the festive break. They asked 1,000 people to name the factors that caused marital strain over Christmas – with financial pressure, excess alcohol, disagreements with the in-laws and rows over chores coming out on top of the list.
Ruth Sutherland, chief executive of Relate, explained that January is one of the busiest times of the year for their relationship counsellors.
She said: ‘New Year is a time many of us assess how life is going and this can make people think about how relationships are faring.’
The Institute of Leadership and Management also found that most workers were dissatisfied with their current job – with one in five planning to change their role this year and almost 80 per cent wanting to move firms.
In keeping with the mood of misery, a poll by Evian discovered that over a third of commuters described their journey as ‘boring’ and nearly a fifth said going back to work had felt ‘just like Groundhog Day’.
Researchers said the happiest days of the year are Christmas Eve and Day, followed by New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day and the ‘first sunny weekend of the year’.
Daily Mail