January-2026-Updates
I follow a lot of blogs by RSS and enjoy reading other people's week notes on their lives and the things they've read. Its a personal moment of human recommendation and curation that is sorely needed in this age of slop. I've tried doing something similar before but have always dropped it. So I'm picking it up again. Weekly is a bit too quick for me so I'm going to try to do it monthly.
Life
January is a grim month, all darkness and cold. Fascism and state violence are on full display in the USA, making it a particularly grim month. Storms rolled in across the Atlantic, grim portents of what might happen to us if Reform get in.
For the first week I came down with winter lurgy, so it felt like the year began with shudders and false starts. I missed the January starters at the gym though, so that was a bonus.
It feels like I've been hibernating a lot, but like the green spears of daffodils that have started to appear everywhere progress has been made. I've done a lot of writing, using my lunch breaks. We got a lot of DIY done, putting up pictures and painting rooms. Its nice to have a house that we can make changes to. A space we can grow into, make plans for the future.
Books
By coincidence, I read along themes of folklore and horror this month. Barrowbeck by Andrew Michael Hurley is a fantastic collection of stories set in the same Yorkshire village over thousands of years. Each story cuts off at the perfect time, giving you just enough information while remaining creepy and unexplained.
Less successful was Never Whistle in the Dark, a collection of native American dark fiction. This was a mixed bag, with most stories following a denial of spirits/ spirits enact vengeance sort of structure. Some that went deeper or offered a different story stood out.
Staying with the folklore theme, Folklore Rising by Ben Edge is an artistic study of folklore rituals across the UK. Combining intricate paintings with reports from the various events, this is a passionate exploration of the meaning and wider significance of folklore. It was a present from my wife and she knows me well.
I also read:
- Late Light By Michael Malay, passionate and beautiful nature writing with a reminder of what is being lost.
- I reread The Air Year By Caroline Bird, which remains surreal but grounded in deep emotion.
- Make Sneaky Art by Nishant Jain which is an inspiring manifesto to carry a sketchbook and make bad art for the joy of it.
Articles
Since abductions happen quickly—often stealing people in two or three minutes—the response needs to be just as fast. And it works because when people hear whistles and car horns, they start looking out. They come out of their houses. It works because everyone knows what is happening is wrong, and everyone is willing to risk their lives to protect people.
This morning my partner and I wake up early to the sound of whistles, we try to determine where they are coming from, we make a plan, today I stay with the kids, she walks down the block where an ICE patrol is watching, whistling, witnessing as a group of masked agents are waiting in an unmarked vehicle outside an apartment complex adjacent to our daughter’s school. No one is taken. It does not feel like winning.
Write a detailed description of the process of drinking a glass of water, eating an apple, or the act of ingesting some other small meal. Renovate your conception of what constitutes an event.
And this is where I think it can be really helpful to start with small, tactile steps. For me that meant I started by transcribing the voice memos. I listened to them and I typed them up. Simple. A task with a clear purpose and end point.
Music
Not to sound like all of the music press, but the Geese album from last year (Being Killed) is really good. Solid grooves that build around Cameron Winter's unique voice. Sometimes it feels like the songs are going to fall apart, but they are just held together by the band.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore's album *Tragic Magic* is quiet and lush, with Barwick's ethereal voice interacting with Lattimore's delicate and perfect harp. It's a beautiful album.Final thoughts
Taken from Crack Magazine December 2025
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