Things That Make Me Happy - A January Challenge

To combat the January blues, at the start of the year I decided to photograph something that makes me feel happy every day for the entire month, then post the picture and a few words on Instagram. You can find me on Instagram as starzalucya. 

The way I decided to do it was, every day, recognise when I felt a spark of happiness and then photograph what prompted that, rather than just intellectually think of stuff that ought to make me happy. It's really helped me feel more up-beat in a month that has generally been pretty awful in terms of world news, as well as the fact that my central heating often fails to work despite two visits from a boiler engineer. There's also the general January nastiness of cold, grey weather. 

Few of the things i photographed are specifically witchy, because I'm an ordinary person who does ordinary stuff as well as being a witch. I enjoy reading classic crime novels as well as pagan books, for example. There's a confession! 

I thought I'd share my daily happiness words for the month so far, together with a few of the photos. There isn't room for all the photos on this post, but as I said earlier you can find them on Instagram if you want to have a look. At 4pm this afternoon, I'll be doing a Facebook Live talk on Magic for the Month: January, and sharing some other ways of making this time of year a little more magical and a little happier.

Things That Make Me Happy in January (so far)

Jan 1: The photo to the left shows my cat calendar for the month. I always enjoy turning over the page at the start of a month and seeing the new picture.

Jan 2: A special Christmas card. It arrived late, but it was a lovely surprise.

Jan 3: Enjoying the lights on my Yule tree in the evenings before Twelfth Night.

Jan 4: The Monsoon shawl my husband, John, bought me when we were on holiday in Sussex back in the before times. It is lovely and warm.

Jan 5: The mug that kicks my arse into working mode in the morning. 

Jan 6: The sun ⛅ coming out from behind the clouds on a January morning. You can see the photo I took at the top of this post.

Jan 7: Listening to classic rock on Spotify.

Jan 8: The Retelling of Old Tales by Andrew Guthrie, illustrated by Dronma. I got one of the very limited edition copies via Kickstarter, but isn't currently available outside that. It's a collection of Scottish tales from the repertoire of an old traditional storyteller, and I'm very happy to have a copy of this rare book.

Jan 9: John helping me do my accounts before the end of the tax year. Getting them finished makes me even more happy.

Jan 10: The new office chair. It's very comfortable.

Jan 11: Having a working lightbulb in my bedroom again after the old one broke a week ago. Bright lights help me overcome the January blues, and the bedroom had been pretty gloomy with just a table lamp.

Jan 12: The delivery of a fresh fruit box. Yum!

Jan 13: Reading the British Library Crime Classic Murder Underground. It's set in London, which makes me particularly happy.

Jan 14: My witch room. Tidied up the day before I give my Facebook live talk.

Jan 15: Well, I'm still to choose my happy picture for today, but Friday always makes me a little bit happy as it is the end of the working week.

We're half way through the month and I still haven't photographed my cats! I'm sure they'll make an appearance before the end of the month.