Will’s World: Books, Benidorm and banishing the blues
© Richard Stanton I’m writing this on the third Monday of January, or Blue Monday – so called because it’s said to be the most depressing day of the year.
Seemingly it’s down to many factors, including the weather, personal debt levels, post-Christmas social isolation, time since new year’s resolutions were broken, low motivational levels, and the nagging feeling of a need to take some sort of action.
See also: Farm Doctor: How to spot signs of poor mental health
About the author
The thing is, though, like many other days with labels, it was completely made up as a marketing tool by a travel company in the early 2000s when they wanted to shift more holidays during midwinter.
If only I’d known earlier in life that depression could be magically cured by a week at an all-inclusive hotel in Benidorm in January.
It would have saved me a whole lot of trouble. Capitalism at its purest genius best or its manipulative worst? I’ll let you decide.
Talking tactics
It does strike me, though, that anything that gets people talking about mental health is going to be a good thing.
Recently I saw a post from a friend of mine on LinkedIn that got me thinking.
In it, she shared some of the non-negotiable daily habits she uses to support her mental wellbeing, and asked what other people do to help theirs.
It was interesting to see the responses. Some were the standard sort of things, and others made me smile at their uniqueness and humour.
I’ve tried hard in recent years to implement a few of these habits myself. None of them are particularly original, but they’ve helped me enormously, especially during stressful periods.
The first is to read more books and keep social media use to a bare minimum. OK, I’m writing this based on a post I saw on social media, but generally I do quite well with it.
I’ll occasionally post things and chat with friends, but I very rarely doom-scroll though anything these days, and my mental health has hugely improved as a result.
Who knew that avoiding all that negativity, hatred and anger would do that?
I try very hard not to worry about things I can’t control, though I find it to be almost impossible to cut out completely.
In a job with so much that can go wrong, perhaps worrying is just the lot of the farmer.
Luhrmann logic
I try to remind myself of what Baz Luhrmann said in his seminal 1997 song “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”: “Know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.”
He was right, it is. Anyway, I’ve got much better at it, but it’s a work in progress.
I go much easier on myself. Sounds obvious, maybe, but we all make mistakes.
It’s easy to dwell on the what-ifs and what-abouts of life, but in the end sometimes it’s enough to just get the basics done and try to enjoy things along the way.
Last, and most importantly, I’m trying to be mentally in the room and present when I’m with the family; my notoriously short attention span means I find it so easy to be distracted by emails, phone calls or farm admin.
Fortunately, after 20 years together the present Mrs Evans has me figured and strictly demands both eye contact and full concentration from me when she’s telling me something, like the Royal Marines drill instructor she really should have been.
If anyone’s got any interesting or different habits of their own, I’d love to hear them.