Over the holiday season I tend to throw all of my responsibilities out the window and embrace full degenerative mode. Staying up until four in the morning used to be a regular occurrence during my youth, but these days when I stay up late enough to hear the birds sing I know I’ve messed up.

Last night I even tried to kick the habit by physically getting into bed around midnight. Unfortunately, I traded watching silly cleaning hack videos on my phone for playing a video game in bed until I finally felt tired at 4am. It’s not a great feeling!! I’m going to continue working on it, though, and as with most things I’m sure my sleep schedule will even out at some point.

I actually have a lot on my mind lately, which is a likely contributor to my poor sleep habits. I’ve always been worried about money (it’s something my family didn’t have a lot of when I was growing up), but now that I’m an adult that worry has expanded to include my parents’ financial situations. It’s really complicated and difficult to explain, so I’ll leave it at that. Just know that right now money is at the forefront of my mind and I hate it.

So today my partner asked me what made me want to start my photo journal up again and I thought I should share my reply. Recently I’ve been doing some online self-guided therapy through the NHS and my focus has been on de-stressing. It’s moderately helpful, but the main thing that’s been therapeutic about it has been reflecting on my days and really working out what is weighing heavily on me. Since I started the online therapy course, I’ve been thinking more about how much I enjoyed keeping a daily journal back in 2016, and then yesterday I just said “what the heck!” and here we are.

It’s always good to have an outlet. Keeping a little record of my days with photos is really nice to look back on, too. Anyway, I don’t feel like I did anything particularly interesting today. I’ve been playing one of my favourite video games (Cities: Skylines) and right now I’m working on getting the last trophy for PS4 but I’m on my third city trying for it. Other than playing video games, I did manage to practice Korean on duolingo for a little bit!

Tomorrow we’ve got plans to exchange gifts with the siblings, and then Tuesday marks the end of holiday mode for me and Alex, so I’m definitely trying to maximise my chill time before I need to head back to the studio to make more candles.