Chapter 15: Miserable or Joyful?
The Daily Misery Index is a graph that identifies the most miserable days. The data was gathered from the frequency of Google searches for the words—pain, anxiety, stress, fatigue, depression—for every day for a year. (I tried to copy the graph here, but it would not let me. Click the link to see it.) If you can envision the graph in your mind, the months are in columns across the top--January to December. A scale from 50 (less miserable) to 100 (more miserable) is calibrated on the lefthand side. A black curvy line starts in January at 65 and goes up and down, according to the data, to end at December at about 65. A blue line shows the raw data. It looks like a seismograph, measuring earthquakes, going up and down across the graph. The least least miserable days of the year are New Year’s Day, the Saturday after Valentine’s Day, the 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve a...