My personal weather report, January 2026

Noticing what’s shifting, what’s ending and what might be trying to emerge at the birth of a new year

Janus, the Roman god of doorways and thresholds, feels like the appropriate place to begin the first newsletter of the year.

I am writing this from my childhood home in London, where, like a Victorian lady, I am convalescing from post-viral fatigue after yet another fight with COVID. The last three weeks have been an endless twilight, measured out in teaspoons, hot baths and flannel. When not sleeping, I’m either:

– reading about the night sky

– scouring Vinterior for furniture for my new home

– reflecting on the fact that my personal weather report is unsettled

Luckiness, lost-ness, creativity and curiosity are all appearing in quick succession, like squalls rolling through a single afternoon.

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In times of institutional collapse, people turn to both strongmen and spells.

So far in 2026, President Trump has casually kidnapped the president of Venezuela and announced his intention to take Greenland – with or without Denmark’s consent – to secure the valuable minerals that are being exposed by climate change. An article in The Economist predicts we could return to a medieval world of warring feudal states dominated by autocrats.

We're also living through the rise of witches. Tarot has become mainstream. Herbal remedies are going viral on Instagram as mistrust in government-funded healthcare grows. Many now have their star sign on their dating profile, alongside their job and whether they want children.

These movements seem part of the same impulse: a search for  meaning when the ground feels unstable.

I recently conducted an interview with the singer Charlotte Church, who now owns a retreat centre in Wales called The Dreaming, where she offers women the opportunity to reconnect to the land through ceremony.

“We are not tourists on this planet; we are within the ecosystem,” she told me. “I think more people, even those who err towards skepticism, are wanting to be part of growing a new culture, a new way of living that is in balance with everything else.”

Personally, I feel like a little animal with ears pricked and pupils distended, peering into the darkness. With so much crumbling, the soil finally smells fertile enough for something new to take root.

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As a self-employed wordsmith in an industry where AI is rewriting the rules in real time, professionally everything feels unpredictable and very much all to play for.

That same sense of Wild West possibility ripples through my personal life. When those of us who saw young adulthood as a test lab began thinking seriously about settling down in our late twenties, COVID put our romantic lives on hold. In my case, it severed ties to my home city, where I’d been doing the Hackney-warehouse-natural-wine thing. Although I’d travelled extensively, it had never occurred to me that an ambitious British writer could really live anywhere except London.

And yet, suddenly, the opposite seemed true: to live and work at all, locked-down London felt impossible. I moved to south Devon, where my mother’s family has ancient roots, to Rome, and eventually to the African island of Cape Verde, where I fell in love, before heading on to Mexico for several years.

As remote work has remained the norm, for the past two years I’ve split my time between a ramshackle shared house in a bohemian corner of Devon, a studio in a surf town in Mexico and my parents’ house in south London.

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Growing up, this was not how I pictured the end of my 20s/early 30s. Us 90s babies are the bridge generation. We remember a time when our parents carried briefcases into the office every day, every house had a landline and learning to read the A–Z was an essential life skill.

We saw social media arrive: Bebo, with its digitising of playground politics, inviting you to choose your Top Ten friends; Facebook, when we thought it completely legitimate to dedicate an entire album to blurry photos of a night spent drinking WKD’s with near strangers in the park; and Instagram, which didn’t arrive until university.

We are also the first generation who are almost as likely to be single as not. According to The Economist, singledom is reshaping the world: “Among Americans aged 25–34, the proportion living without a spouse or partner has doubled in five decades, to 50% for men and 41% for women. Since 2010, the share of people living alone has risen in 26 out of 30 rich countries.”

I am a case in point. Although I am dating at the moment, it has been several years since there was anyone I’d call ‘my boyfriend’ – and so far, never someone who has felt like a potential life partner. With all the adventures and discoveries, and the worldwide chaos, it just hasn’t felt like the time.

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However, in 2025, something shifted. My wonder receptors felt completely sodden, oversaturated by experience. I nearly got shot in Mexico City. Several friends pursuing alternative lifestyles struggled with their mental health. Another friend, the ecologist Claire Halliday, went missing from the Scottish Isle of Mull, leaving behind nothing but a camper van filled with skeleton leaves collected on her travels.

Suddenly, more than anything, I wanted a home.

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When I make the time to listen, my internal barometer generally swings between smugness and anxiety. Most days I feel I’ve hacked the system – buying a crooked, ancient hideaway in Devon where I can think and write, while continuing to seek work and romance in London – but others I fret that perhaps the mainstream is well, main, for a reason. Sometimes I worry about the possibility of not finding a partner and whether my career would somehow be ‘better’ if I had stayed at my London magazine job. 

According to The Guardian, the most common regret of the dying is not having the courage to live a life that felt true for fear of other peoples’ expectations. Ultimately, the thing I am most afraid of is not really having lived during the wild and precious sum of time allotted me. And this unscripted life certainly feels like protection from that.

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A friend recently posed the question: what is the difference between Emptiness and Nothingness? She was calling from a darkened room, and I answered from a candlelit bath, my fatigue-dried, Victorian-lady eyes too sensitive for electricity.

We hashed it out as I wallowed and came up with something like this: Emptiness implies a structure from which something – an essential quality – is actively missing. But Nothing is different. Like the colour white, or the universe before the Big Bang, it is pregnant with potential. Everything that could or ever will be is folded within it.

So far in 2026, chaos and magic seem to be riding shotgun through smoking ruins and peach orchards bathed in moonlight. My little animal ears remain pricked as I slumber in Nothing’s great belly button, dreaming of… Something emerging from the mist. 

Here’s to a very happy and alive new year. Thanks for reading this very personal piece – please hold it gently. If you feel like sharing, I’d love to know what your weather report is this month.

Love,

Imogen x

January Wayfinding: provisions for the month to come

Reading Acquainted with the night sees Canadian poet Christopher Dewdney delve deep into the darkness through beautifully woven storytelling that incorporates strands of science, art, bedtime stories and spirituality. A sure way to connect with wonder on sleepless nights.

Learning / Practising New year’s resolutions are a complex thing and currently I’m much too tired to set any. However, in previous years, The Year Compass has proved a useful resource for reflecting and clarifying intentions (it’s free).

Watching It may be set at Christmas but The Holdovers’ strange atmosphere, black wit and snowy New England setting feels more like a January film to me. It’s about an eccentric teacher at a boarding school forced to stay on campus over the holidays to babysit a troublesome student, and the complicated bond they form as a result.

Homemaking This month I bought an uneven elm stool from a Devon salvage yard. I like that it refuses to announce its purpose: it holds a book, a cup of tea, sometimes nothing at all. As I think about home less as an achievement and more as a practice, I’m drawn to objects that take time to reveal themselves. I also chose Little Greene’s Maasai paint for my kitchen cabinets.

Notes from my desk this month

A brief snapshot of how my professional life is unfolding this month, and what it suggests about the wider landscape of travel writing, brand storytelling and cultural work.

The appetite for storytelling that emphasises meaning shows no sign of waning in the luxury brand market. In travel writing, editors remain keen on fresh takes on so-called ‘hot’ destinations but there is a growing interest in stories that explore how history, ecology and belief systems shape how people move through the world. Rather than just inspiring movement, I feel editors are looking for pieces that help readers make sense of why they move at all.

Projects this month have included: writing an advertorial for Nat Geo// Writing 3 x advertorials for the Financial Times/ Scott Dunn // Writing a feature about Mexico City’s hidden Aztec wetlands for the Red Bulletin // Writing about the rise of spiritual travel for SUITCASE, which was recently bought by Afar // Working with Hommage Art (a company that sells lithographic posters from 20th century masters such as Picasso and Matisse) to refine their Tone of Voice and write their new website

Of course, you can always buy my book

 The Ethical Traveller: 100 Ways To Roam The World Without Ruining It