Worst Day Of Year Behind Us Now

Lately I have found myself suffering through the day.

My eyelids are half-closed, my mouth hangs open, and each moment feels pre-programmed and meaningless. I'm just phoning it in.

Obviously, it's been far too long since we've had a good media-circus-type show trial. Those of us in the Global Media Conspiracy live for those things.

Perhaps my poor mood is due to something greater than a slow news cycle. I'm not sure what it is, but the good news is that I have successfully made it through the worst day of the year. So have you.

According to a guy with clearly too much time on his hands at Wales' Cardiff University, Monday was the worst day of the year. He figured this out via a convoluted mathematical equation, which is a clear sign that life was already going poorly for him. He was so miserable, he decided to do math.

If you are one of the increasingly rare individuals with a 9-to-5 job, you have no doubt noticed that you are still getting up before the sun does and that it has shuffled on to dance upon the happy heads of Australians by the time you are finished with work.

Dr. Cliff Arnalls is the name of that Welsh guy with too much time on his hands. As he points out, it seems that the whole world is conspiring against us at this time of the year. All the cash you forked out for champagne over the holiday season no longer seems like money well spent. And massive, chocolate-covered-cherry-size holes have been fired through your plans to finally become the towering mass of muscle that would reduce an ex-girlfriend into fits of jealousy and regret.

Miserable weather and the fact that you're just not into "The Bachelorette" or "American Idol" this season mean that you are left to sit on the couch, listless, and think: "I have accomplished absolutely nothing since last January. I'll likely accomplish nothing by next January. I'll just keep going and going and going like this until eventually my heart stops and no one will come to my funeral and I'll end up like one of those stories you read about funeral homes in Florida and some grand mistake will result in my ashes being scattered in Paris. I hate Paris, but somehow my dusty remains will spend all eternity blowing through her streets."

You get the point.

But that was Monday. We have hit rock bottom; it has been mathematically proven. You can't argue with math. The worst day of the year has already come and gone.

Armed with that knowledge, I suppose there's a lot to look forward to -- like doing taxes, my birthday (hooray, I'll be old!), and that embarrassing phone call I'll make to my boss at 11:30 p.m. on St. Patrick's Day.

Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll lose a finger. Oh boy. What fun. Happy days are here again.

Perhaps the improvement in each consecutive day will be a little more subtle. And perhaps we need to help it along. There's an overused phrase that encourages people to live each day as if it were their last. That's a bit silly. If I lived each day as if it were my last, I would spend every day eating birthday cake and doing very naughty things with my wife.

But, there is a simple joy in taking on each new day and knowing that yesterday was not the last. And, most likely, there are other good days ahead. I'm not sure we can determine them mathematically, but they're out there.

That all said, I'm still hoping for a nice, juicy show trial -- preferably one involving Chelsea Clinton and an offshoot band of Lutheran ninjas.

Chris Cope is married, with no children. His column appears every other Tuesday.