January 2026 in Photos

It has been such a long time since I last did a photo challenge that I actually forgot how much I enjoyed them until I was searching for something on my blog and came across an old post, an old photo challenge. I really enjoyed looking back through it and decided it was time to do another one.

So here we are. This is my January in photos.

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Day 1 – Something Fresh

A clean puppy, fresh from the shower. Her shampoo smells of pears – I wish my shampoo smelled as good as hers – and she’s so soft and fluffy afterwards that it’s my favourite time to cuddle her. She doesn’t particularly like being washed but she tolerates it and she does enjoy all the cuddles and stroking she gets afterwards.

Day 3 – A New Habit

One of the things I picked up from doing a New Year’s workshop was the concept of having a Bingo Board for a year, where you could cross off your goals for the year. I knew straight away that one board for a whole year wouldn’t work for me, for my ADHD brain, so I decided to create one for every month. It broke down the goals to much more manageable sizes and that made them easier to cross off, something that really triggers my ADHD when trying to complete tasks: if I can tick something off a list, I’m suddenly much more motivated to do it. And it’s much easier to tick off ‘read one book a month’ than ‘read twelve books in 2026’ so hopefully the monthly approach will work better for me. I’m excited to try it out.

Day 4 – Morning Light

I found all four of the cats curled up on my Mum’s bed, chilling out out of reach of the dogs. It’s so sweet that they like to hang out together, in various states of closeness, and it takes great restraint not to disturb them and wait for another moment to sweep one (or many) of them up for a cuddle. It still feels weird and wrong without Lucy – and I can’t look at them, her descendants, and not miss her – but I’m so relieved that they’re all still so close and that none of them seem to be exhibiting ongoing signs of distress from the loss of Lucy. I don’t know how cats grieve – because apparently they do – and they very clearly missed Lucy desperately early on but I am glad that it hasn’t traumatised them. It’s traumatised me but it’s obviously really important to me that they’re healthy and happy and feel safe and, as far as we can all tell, they are all of these things.

Day 5 – A Quiet Moment

As annoying as my insomnia is, it does mean that I get these moments with Izzy late at night when she’s soft and warm and sleepy. She loves my electric blanket and my duvet and we have some of our best snuggles as I’m trying to sleep. She doesn’t cure insomnia but if I have to deal with it, at least I have her with me while I do.

Day 6 – My Shoes Today

Since my chronic pain got worse in the middle of last year, I have been practically living in my trainers. Way back when I bought them, they felt so expensive when I was spending most of my time in my favourite boots but they have been worth every penny because they’re so comfortable and supportive. I love my boots but they were not designed to be either of those things.

Day 7 – Something Inspiring

I’m not super far into this book yet but I’m absolutely fascinated by it. The worldbuilding is so rich and I’m so intrigued by the characters and their individual stories and how they’ll ultimately intertwine (I’m honestly astonished that, of three of the main characters, one is a disabled trans man and one is a disabled girl and that wasn’t something I even sort out to read – usually you have to really search to find a book with a trans character or a disabled character, let alone multiple characters and characters who are both). It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read and it’s got me so excited about reading again and just the art of storytelling.  (I don’t have a photo because I’ve been reading it on my phone via my library app so this will have to do.)

Day 10 – Out The Window

I took this while my Mum and I were driving through town, on my way to therapy. The weather was miserable but it was kind of nice to be out, having been in a blanket burrito of depression since the New Year. And yes, those are Pomeranians on my socks.

Day 11 – Something I Bought

I haven’t bought anything recently (I’m still recovering from Christmas and a handful of December and January birthdays) but I did have a tattoo appointment booked and I think that’s close enough to count. I went to the amazing Poppy at Briar Rose Tattoo and got this tattoo that I’ve wanted for so many years: the lyric “this is the sound of letting it go” from the song ‘Lullaby’ by Kalie Shorr, from her incredible debut album, Open Book. I’ve loved Kalie’s music since we first met in 2016 (almost ten years ago now!) and I love so many of her songs but this one has always had a special place in my heart and when I asked her last year, she very sweetly wrote it down for me so that I could get this tattoo. And I’ve always wanted it on my left wrist so that I can see it when I play guitar, when I sing the songs that I’ve written to work through my feelings and experiences. To me, that’s what it sounds like to let things go.

Day 12 – A Favourite Place

There are a couple of places I could choose but I’ve been really loving playing the piano recently so it seemed like the best choice for the prompt. I do struggle to play for long periods because of the instability of my back, plus I’m still rebuilding strength in my back after the pinched nerve fiasco last year, but I’m working on it through physiotherapy and hydrotherapy. I miss the days when I could play for hours! I miss the days when I could work on a song for hours! So it’s little and often for now and that’s getting me through but I’m looking forward to being able to play for longer stretches again.

Day 13 – Something Colourful

My Mum and I had a long car journey and just before we left, she presented me with these. We were having a serious sugar rush before we were even half way there…

Day 14 – What Made Me Smile

I mean, Izzy always makes me smile. She’s just so cute and silly, regardless of whether she’s snuggled up with me in bed or bouncing around while playing with a toy. Recently she’s been super excited every time I obviously settle in the living room: she grins so big and licks my face and dances around before snuggling up in my lap, regardless of whatever I’m trying to do. It’s just too adorable.

Day 15 – In My Hand

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know that I love Red Bull, especially the Juneberry flavour in the blue can. It doesn’t really do anything for me caffeine wise (but then neither does coffee) – I think this is due to my ADHD – but I like the taste and the fizz gives me a nice little jolt when I’m tired. I didn’t drink it very much last year due to my stomach issues but now that that’s over, I’ve been enjoying the purple one, which is apparently Grapefruit and Blossom flavour. I’m unconvinced but it tastes good and Blossom is the name of one of my best friends so that’s cute.

Day 17 – Something Soft 

The cats! My beloved cat family. I found them in a bit of a cuddle puddle (apart from Sooty, although she wasn’t exactly far away), which was very cute and I got to have a little moment with each of them. Something that I’ve always found delightful about them – all of them – is that each of them have very different textures to their fur: they’re all soft and silky in their own ways. Although that does make it much more tempting for me to just keep stroking one after the other after the other, round and round and round…

Day 18 – Today’s Vibe

Sometimes I find myself getting caught in a really anxious and stressed out spiral about the social media and branding and promo of my music and it’s really not fun and drains the fun out of it all. I actually don’t hate making social media content as I know so many independent artists do; I enjoy the creativity and the challenge and the opportunity to convey your personality to your audience but I can lose that when I start overthinking it. So sometimes you gotta sit back and not take it all so seriously and just be silly with it: you can check out my Instagram and TikTok if you want to see the result of this little filming session…

Day 19 – My Desk

One of my goals for the month was to tidy and reorganise my desk and it was so nice to have a clear, neat surface again! Yes, it’s been bad for a while – between moving around all of my furniture and then managing a pinched nerve in my back, the piles had really started to build up. I’m probably going to have to reorganise it again once I finish with the rest of my room but I’m enjoying the tidiness while it lasts.

Day 20 – My Reflection

I screwed up this photo in multiple ways – forgetting to use the bigger mirror when there was decent light, accidentally cutting the smaller make up mirror out of the frame when taking this, etc – but oh well. I would’ve skipped the prompt altogether if I wasn’t so proud of how well I did my eyeliner! I have difficulty with make up due to being very short-sighted and struggling with shaky hands at times due to POTS so getting a clean eyeliner wing (and on the first try!) can definitely feel like a win on certain days!

Day 21 – A Little Chaos

Taking photo and video with lots of poofy fabric with an excitable little dog around was always going to be chaotic. It was also very, very cute – I’m pretty sure her impromptu photos came out better than my pre-planned ones…

Day 23 – Looking Down

Izzy doesn’t hate being showers but she really doesn’t enjoy drying off, especially in the colder months. She was particularly cranky after this shower for some reason so I made space for her in my lap, wrapped a towel around her, and slowly stroked her and dried her off gently. This makes her sound so high maintenance, which is pretty funny because that’s really not the case as a general rule. She just really, really doesn’t like being wet.

Day 24 – A Plant

It’s spring! It’s daffodil season!

Day 25 – A Favourite Thing

My automatic thought was to use another dog picture but I wanted to try and include other things in this! So I’m interpreting this as inanimate things and one of my very favourite inanimate things is my guitar, my Taylor Electro-Acoustic guitar. I’d played a number of different guitars before this one – an old classical one that got me toying with the idea of playing once the songwriting seed had taken root, a gorgeous Tanglewood beginner acoustic guitar that I got for my birthday following that discovery, and a beautiful Tanglewood Electro-Acoustic that I got to start playing live at open mics and stuff – but this felt like my first serious guitar, a commitment to songwriting being not only a real passion but a career path I was pursuing. And I bought it with the first instalment of my maintenance grant that I got for my songwriting degree so it’s symbolic of my songwriting and my career and so on in so many ways. (I did actually sell my first Electro-Acoustic guitar around the same time because it was just too big and heavy to commute back and forth to London with so it balanced out financially.) I’ve written some of my favourite songs, some of my most special songs, on it and played some amazing gigs with; it’s even travelled to Nashville with me and I played it on multiple Nashville stages. So yes, it is very, very special to me and I love it so much.

Day 27 – Something Tiny

This is one of my hard drives: it’s about the size of my thumb and holds 2TB worth of data. These have been a godsend, given how big my photo library is and how big some of the music project files are, as well as the video files for music videos, photoshoots, recording session footage, and so on. I have a few and they need a bit of organising but thank god for them: I have so much stuff from about two decades of making stuff on computers.

Day 28 – The Sky Today

Unfortunately I only had my phone so I wasn’t able to capture how beautifully bright and clear the moon looked – and before it even got dark! It was really beautiful. Sometimes I get hyperfixated on how the moon looks and why it looks a certain way – it’s a hyperfixation that will pop up for a while and then fade into the background for a bit before reappearing – and I definitely felt it perk up in my brain, like, “You called?”

Day 29 – A Moment of Joy

Over the last several months, I’ve been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender with a group of friends: we have a group chat where we’ll make a time and then watch an episode or four together, adding our commentary to the group chat. It’s a great way to hang out and watch stuff together and it’s genuinely become one of my favourite ways to spend an evening. And as for Avatar, I never expected to love it so much. I enjoyed it from the first episode but before we were even halfway through the first season, I absolutely adored it and have been loving every single episode. I am going to be absolutely devastated when it finishes.

Day 30 – A Goal I’m Working On

Between the pinched nerve and the ongoing digestive issues that I was dealing with through the second half of last year, I never really managed to establish a consistent physiotherapy routine; I was just doing exercises here and there as I felt able to (which wasn’t often). But now that those things are in the past, I’ve made sure I have everything I need (an extra mat because the floor is apparently really hard even with one mat, the right size roller and ball, the right levels of resistance bands, etc) and I’ve been figuring out how to make doing it as easy as possible so that I’m more likely to do it. I love my hydrotherapy but I don’t love my physiotherapy and making sure that there is not even the slightest obstacle to stop me doing it – as ridiculous as making sure that it is all super easy to access – just makes it easier for me to do. Then, once I’ve started to get into a rhythm and find it less of a chore, those tiny hurdles just seem to disappear. It’s working so far but I haven’t been doing it for very long so fingers crossed it keeps working.

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So that was January in photos. It was really fun to do this kind of challenge again and I definitely want to do another one at some point. I like having something to keep an eye out for each day – something colourful, something joyful, something thought-provoking, etc – because it makes me look at the world a little differently, makes me look a little bit closer; it gets me out of my head and that’s definitely a practice that I need more practice at.