According to an article in today’s Austin American-Statesman (which requires a subscription so no link) entitled, “In mood science, today = bluest of 2006” today is supposed to be a gloomy day based on the calculations of one Cliff Arnall, a health psychologist at Cardiff University in Wales. He uses the following formula to calculate the year’s “emotional low point”:
1/8W + (D-d)3/8 x TQ/M x NA
The variables are weather (W), debt (D), monthly salary (d), time since Christmas (T), time since failure to quit a bad habit (Q), low motivation levels (M) and the need to take action (NA).
I’m not a mathematician, and I’m not sure how to assign the variables, but I tried to work it anyway.
It’s beautiful today in central Texas and even 1/8 of that is still a pretty fine day. I got lost on failure to quit a bad habit. Are we measuring minutes or years? If I just quit a bad habit or never failed to quit a bad habit, then does Q=0? If so that could throw the whole equation out of whack. We could wind up with gloominess essentially being 1/8W + 0. As stated earlier 1/8 of a beautiful day ain’t bad. I also realize you’d need to make a major adjustment for the southern hemisphere since large swaths of the planet could be enjoying a perfect summer day.
Basically then it seems that if you quit a bad habit on a reasonably nice day (or in the southern hemisphere), you’ll have no call to worry about your debts, income, motivation or the fact that Christmas was a month ago.
Fortunately for me, I had a non-melancholy Monday and was able to maintain all of my bad habits.
James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.
[…] Actually, A Very Good Day Yesterday afternoon as I was coming up the hill at the end of my run, I noticed that Mrs. Next Door Neighbor and her daughter were walking away from my front door pulling a wagon. On Saturday I had seen them unloading boxes from a van outside their house and now these same boxes appeared to be in the back of the wagon. They noticed me approaching and stopped on the sidewalk by my house. I then realized that despite the calculations of the mood scientists, yesterday was not to be the worst day of the year. In fact, it was one of the best. It occurs on different days for each of us, making it something of a moveable feast, but yesterday – for me, anyway – was Girl Scout Cookie Day. […]