Blue Monday Thoughts

The Interwebs would have you believe that today, Blue Monday, is the glummest day of the year. It’s all something to do with the return to work, school, schedules and possible sudden awareness of all holiday overindulging/overspending. Perhaps our 30 degree temperature drop isn’t helping either? We say bullocks to Blue Monday. Unless of course, it’s this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x9mfgUsIis

Instead of wallowing in glum, we say let’s tear it up.

When we were kids, my Dad, who may have been the tiniest bit noise sensitive, had a habit of telling us to “settle down” if we got too rowdy, too antsy, too restless, too um, childlike? He liked order. I don’t blame him. Order can be very comforting, but when it comes to beating Blue Monday, we’d like to suggest quite the opposite.

As I dig into ideas and copy for clients new and old, I look to Annie Dillard’s amazing words for inspiration, and they never disappoint. And though they come from the writer’s perspective, they are for everyone.

“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”

–Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Give it all. Give it now. More will come in its place. Bullocks to the blue.