An Act of Defiance
c. Melon Images
Did any of you happen to notice how miserable and dark the world seemed yesterday? It was as if the final straw had actually broken the camel’s back, we’d inevitably spread ourselves too thinly, and together us donkeys had reached the end of all of our tethers.
Many years ago, the media would sometimes pull out this particular researcher, a Dr Cliff Arnall of Cardiff University. Back then Dr Arnall claimed to have pinpointed the third Monday in January as being the most depressing day of the year; using a quirky little formula which factored in such details as miserable weather, debt, the time since the Christmas and New Year holidays, and failure to stick to New Year resolutions. It became known as Blue Monday.
Of course, as with so much in this day and age, the formula has been replaced by an app. Mappiness daily gathers data on happiness from millions of users amassing quizillions of entries. Interestingly no January Blue Monday has plummeted to the depths of bluest indigo that Mappiness registered on November 9th 2016.
So why this picture?
By the end of yesterday we’d heard that marchers in San Francisco (and elsewhere) were on the streets protesting for trans rights, a baby squirrel had been returned to its nest in Toronto, rabbits had escaped floods in New Zealand by jumping on to the backs of sheep. And just before I went to bed I saw this photograph, with a reaching arm, and a wayward balloon, and it made me feel happier.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, Rachel Irving and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
