Blue Monday

I see that today is "Blue Monday", described as the most depressing day of the year.  The assumptions on which this is based are that it is probably cold, the Christmas hangover of unpaid bills has arrived, and New Year's resolutions are already broken.

In my case, however, it is just the opposite.  We have yet to have any serious snow, only two light days in December and one light day in January.  My Christmas bills are paid and the yearly contribution to my  TFSA (Tax-Free Savings Account) has been made.  My two New Year's resolutions are still well intact, the first (as usual) to lose a few pounds and the other to focus less on political and social issues from the United States.

Of my resolutions, I am ten pounds overweight according to the BMI calculator.  Given that I tend to have my highest weight in January and am ten pounds below where I was three years ago at this time (when I then lost twenty pounds), I'm fairly optimistic that I can again get back to healthy weight.  For my age, I am at the 46 percentile, meaning I am actually a little less than average in an overweight population. 

The second resolution, to reduce the amount of unpleasant political information I receive from the U. S., is also under way.  I've limited the amount of time watching CNN and am in the process of severely reducing time on Facebook.  Although I like my Facebook "friends", the attempt to engage in meaningful political or social discussion on the forums doesn't work.  I was particularly amazed a week ago when three seemingly moderate comments I made were severely attacked by others.  On both the left and the right, there is very little tolerance for the middle ground, very little effort to look at both sides of issues, and strong partisan identification.  Maybe this is just the nature of Facebook, but I've decided that aside from staying in contact with real friends and family, there isn't much to be gained from it.