Blue Monday

So...driving to work this morning, I heard that today has been deemed "Blue Monday" because now is the time when holiday credit card bills start pouring in, and New Years Resolutions are busted already.  To counteract this phenomenon, my radio station of choice decided to play "Kokomo" to cheer people up.

Guess what?  It worked. Why?  Almost BEST SONG EVER!

And it got me thinking.  The song refers to going to Kokomo "to get away from it all..."   In what..1989??  How complicated was life then? Didn't people just have to worry about changing batteries in their Walkmen, back combing their bangs, and matching their legwarmers to their belts?  Ok, maybe that was just me.  But in all seriousness, life must have been simpler then.  Why?  Technology and Credit.

We have technology to make our lives easier, but in reality the time we've gained has been filled ten-fold by all the hustle and bustle of life as defined by this Generation.  When I was a child, life consisted of school and the odd sport.  My parents activities were limited, and the highlight of the week was Knot's Landing on Thursday nights.  Now I can PVR hours of TV that I don't want to miss, but will never have enough time to watch.  But be darned if I don't feel pressured to add that PVR'd TV to my TO-DO List. 

And we spend!  Banks lining up to feed us credit to get the immediate gratification we see everyone else getting from the new big screen TV and Navigation equipped SUV.  So we try it out, and get addicted immediately!  And nobody is better than justifying things than our Generation.  Why?  We deserve it of course!  We word hard.  Our kids deserve the best.  Everyone deserves a break.  But don't buy a KitKat, it goes straight to your thighs.  And those thighs had better fit nicely into a Size 4.  Maybe mine would if I spent more time scrubbing my laundry by hand and growing our food in a garden. 

So, maybe one key to my improved happiness is to simplify.  Take things back a few decades.  I'm keeping my washing machine, but maybe this spring a garden is in order.  And I need to re-think my TO-DO lists.

I ended the day by paying $20 to park downtown (Seriously!!) and it took me almost 2 hours to get home.  I thought about renaming today CRAP Monday, but then I saw my kids smile when I picked them up.  And it could always be worse.  I could have been the poor sucker working the parking booth, having to charge people $20 per day.  Bet he's popular.