aerialovely

  • ← back to tiffany julia
  • the lovely shop
    • Cut Files & Templates
    • Printables
      • Cards & Ephemera
      • Full Journaling Kits
      • Journaling Printables
      • Papers
      • Stickers
    • Ebooks + Zines
    • Music
  • courses
    • view all courses
    • free classes
  • journal archive
  • Login
0
✩ life unraveling

unraveling 2022

January 9, 2022

Hello lovelies!

Well, I’m a bit late on sharing my 2022 intentions, but the last few months of 2021 were just so difficult for me that I basically abandoned all will to create any sort of quality content in the capacity that I normally would create and share. But I’m feeling a bit better, my mind is clearer on certain things, and while I don’t think we have any control over our emotions, I’ve at least got a handle on mine now.

2022 feels transformative to me. Like, I feel we’re on the tail end of this pandemic and a new renaissance is about to emerge for all of us. For myself, in particular, I feel ready to make some BIG changes this year and become more.

After working through Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year workbook (I did my own Find Your Word thing this year), I have a clear vision of how I want this year to look and feel. I will be continuing my a gentle unfurling practice. I’m actually adopting that phrase a gentle unfurling and it’s becoming my personal mantra. It just encompasses my unraveling process so well as I always ease into the process and unravel myself bit by bit. I take my time with it and it truly is a gentle process. So that phrase will still see me through my year, but I do have a One Little Word this year to also guide me.

My word for 2022 is Becoming.

Becoming was actually one of my supporting words last year. But as I went through the process of finding my 2022 word, the idea of “beginning to be” really resonated with me. I’ve spent my entire adult life searching the world trying to find myself. As a Type 4, I never truly felt like I belonged. I never felt like I had much of an identity and I still struggle even now to really know who I am.

And then one day it struck me that I don’t think we can actually find ourselves. I think we have to create ourselves. If we want to be someone it is in our power to become that person—and that was a HUGE epipha-me.

So becoming is my word and I’m in love with it.

I did choose a few supporting words—I’m not as in love with them though—that each represents one of my intentions: change, inspire, and balance.

I want to invite change into my life and with that change, I want to learn how to let go. I’ve learned that you can’t truly change if you aren’t willing to let go of things that no longer serve you. And I’ve been holding onto a lot of things from my past—past hurts, past hopes—that I think it’s time to finally let go of those things to make room for new better things ahead. So I’m inviting the courage to be able to do that.

Inspire encompasses my creativity and exploration. I want to inspire others and be inspired. I naturally do this by creating and sharing, and consuming the art of others through reading and learning. Inspiration is a method of growth for me and I want to continue to invite it into my life.

Lastly is balance. So much of my past year had been teetering on extremes. I’m a person who strives for symmetry and balance in all things and I would love to find that again this year. I want to maintain a balance of the mind and spirit, and establish balance in all aspects of my life. I want to strive for peace and ultimately find joy and love.

These are my words and I feel very good about them.

Along with my words, I’m changing up my creative process a little bit. As of right now, I’m going to take a bit of a break from creating in order to share. What I have the capacity to do right now is share processes with my Lovely Patrons and post some of my journal pages on Instagram. New Youtube videos may be sparse right now as I’m still trying to figure out how I want that to fit into my life.

One thing I’m resurrecting though is my a gentle unfurling Instagram account. I began this account as a way to explore creative self-portraiture and while I will still explore that there, I’ve decided to make this account home to my personal creative unraveling process. I will be sharing images and words, inspiring quotes and books I’m reading, and maybe a few bits of my personal life thrown into the mix. I’m calling it “an artsy personal account.” I ultimately decided to separate this content from my aerialovely account because I know not everyone will be into this sort of thing and I really want to keep aerialovely a place for creative journal inspiration. It will very much stay the place where I dump all my photos of my journals and memory-keeping projects.

With that, I am going to still be actively journaling. I may not post my processes as often as journaling has become a very personal habit of mine. A lot of my journal pages these days are literally just pages of writing. But I will still be sharing the more inspiring pages where I got creative. My journals have become a place where I document my everyday life as well as create fun art journaling spreads. It’s the very best combination of scrapbooking, art journaling, and junk journaling and I’m so in love with it. I do believe I finally found balance in my creative process and the perfect format for me.

I am going to keep an unraveling journal for this year. I actually signed up for Ali Edwards’ One Little Word workshop this year to keep myself accountable to my word. This is my very first time taking the workshop, so I suspect that my unraveling journal for this year will be a combination of my OLW entries and other personal entries of self-discovery. I’m looking forward to this journal the most this year and will share what I’ve done so far with it soon.

Some of my more tangible intentions for this year are pretty much the same ones I had last year:

  • I want to read more books! My goal in 2021 was to read 25 books. I managed to read 17 books, which is quite an accomplishment seeing how in 2020 I only read 3 books. So I’m quite proud of myself! But this year I’m hoping to nail those 25 books.
  • I want to worry less about things out of my control and spend less on things that I don’t need.
  • In that same vein, I want to live more and save more. I finally want to establish a place for myself in this world both spiritually and physically. I’ve been saving quite a bit during this pandemic because I haven’t been traveling much, so I’m hoping to be able to afford my own home someday this year.

Ultimately, I want to live a more simple life. I think with the right mindset I can become the person I want to be and create the life I want to live. And I truly feel this is my year to do that.

Did you choose a word for this year and have you set any intentions?

TAGS:new year intentionsunraveling

Leave a Comment Cancel Comment

Previous Post
Creating My “Stats” and Intentions Page | journal with me ☆ 59
Next Post
snippets from my journal 01 printable
tiffany julia
Get To Know Me

Get To Know Me

Hi! I'm Tiffany, an art deviant living in New York City. Welcome to my site of life, crafts and love.

Current Location

Current Location

new york, ny

Currently Reading

The Missing Element: Inspiring Compassion for the Human Condition

Debra Silverman

.
55%

We Hope This Reaches You in Time

R.H. Sin

.
22%

Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within

Janet Conner

.
42%

Life

Journaling

Memory Keeping

Unraveling

Wanderlust

site information

Please do not take anything from this site. All content is © Tiffany Julia at aerialovely.com, unless otherwise stated. Please read my site policies for more information.

buy me a sweet treat

Follow on Feedly

View
Open
Started on this piece last night while catching up on a whole backlog of videos from @februaryandjune (my Watch Later list is LONG). Been wanting to dive deep into slow stitching for a while now and my gosh it's such a meditative practice! I've always added random stitching to my snippet journal covers, but never like this. I just went with the flow and did whatever felt right. This piece will probably turn into a journal cover, but for right now, it's just a piece of layered fabric that I'm stitching to my heart's content! So far there's no machine stitching on here and hopefully, it stays that way. I am going to add some beads to it though. Already have a few laid out and waiting to be threaded. Felt very drawn to the blue/green/teal scheme for this one, but I've got some gorgeous pink/coral/beige linens that are calling to be made into a similar piece. I'm thinking I might do a series of them...IDK! That would keep me occupied for a while. Hopefully, by then I'll be all caught up on watching Youtube videos! xx
View
Open
Gathering some pretty things to start on something new:

✩ Antique linens
✩ Fabric ribbons
✩ Embroidery floss
✩ Morganite chips
✩ Aqua glass beads
*need to find some pretty papers to match

I have an idea but haven't figured out how to begin, which means that I just need to do it and start from where I am.

I hope you all had a great holiday weekend. xx
View
Open
I'm quite behind in sharing my journal pages, but here are my March pages in my #unravelingjournal. 

March was all about learning about myself. I like doing this every year to take stock of who I am. I usually review my personality types—Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, Love Languages, my birth chart, etc—and journal my thoughts and revelations. I'm always amazed at all the new insights I gather when I do this—I call them epiphames. Because we know all of this about ourselves already, but depending on where we are in our personal journey, studying ourselves over again always brings with it new insights and ah-ha moments we hadn't recognized before.

I've been really interested in Astrology lately, so for this month, I reflected on my birth chart again. I recently learned about two things—The Four Elements and our North and South Nodes—how you can find out your own from reading your birth chart and what they mean.

I share what I've learned about myself over on my blog, but in a nutshell, I have to be more like Water. I have to learn the practice of stillness and the art of letting go.

I have to learn how to flow. xx
View
Open
Books 4/20: Yesterday I was The Moon by Noor Unnahar
Rating: ✩✩✩

I've been collecting a lot of poetry books lately. A few weekends ago, I purchased four collections from Strand and one of those books was Noor Unnahar's Yesterday I Was The Moon. I've been wanting to read her work for a very long time now, so I was happy to have found a copy at Strand. IDK, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. But it was still a nice read and I love the tile poem very much. xx
View
Open
Stillness—the act of intentionally pausing; of being mindful and present.

I feel like we're all one of three people: one focused on the future, stuck in the past, or living each day in the present. I don't think either is good or bad but the latter is definitely ideal. I feel those who are constantly living for the future forget the good they have now, and those living in the past can't recognize the good right in front of them. The balance between the two is living in the present. Being mindful of all you have and being grateful for it.

I struggle a lot with "living in the moment." I wouldn't be surprised if we all do. Life comes at us fast. There's always something that we need to do, see, or take care of. It's difficult dealing with what's going on in your life plus what's going on in the world. Sometimes we don't have time to slow down and pause. And honestly, I don't think we'll ever have enough time. That's where the intention comes in and when mindfulness comes to play. Like Ferris said, "If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

I've enjoyed exploring stillness, this intentional pause to take note of the things presently around me. I find it so hard to do living in a busy city like New York. There are just too many distractions and too much noise. Everything is always "go, go, go" and it feels odd to just stop. I personally struggle with being stuck in my past, something I work hard at being mindful of. My mind can sometimes spiral down that hurt hole and get stuck on what someone did to me or what awful luck I've had—things from my past that I never had any control over in the first place. I try to be mindful of this and I've noticed that practicing gratitude for what I have now helps pull me out of that spiral. 

I've learned that I need to take more time out of my day to pause. It's almost like when you're packing your bag for a huge trip. You're on automatic as you're packing but you always need to pause and take stock of what's on your list. I think we should all pause and take stock of the greatness in our lives right at this moment. It's far better than what we've lost or what we don't have yet because it's here. xx
View
Open
Oh hey, it's #thursday3 and I've got a new portrait of myself that I haven't shared yet...

✩ I took out my paints the other day because I had a whole basket of acrylic gouache that needed to be added to my swatch book. I sat down and swatched them, then purposely left them all out because I will only use things if they are out in the open on my desk. I gessoed a page in my current journal too AND since I had all of that prepped, last night I actually got messy in my journal! Worked on the Expand prompt from Messy May. Honestly, it felt very good to create an art journal page again!

✩ I've been looking for places to escape to this summer. I really just need to get out of the city and since I work remotely, I definitely could take advantage of traveling and working from wherever I am. Been looking at places in New England because it's easily accessible by train. Not looking to drive long distances (if at all really, which also sucks because this country is just built like that). But IDK, it's probably not just me, but everything has gotten so ridiculously expensive and it seems like everywhere I look the crime rate has gone up (and what I mean by this is gun violence), and society, in general, has gotten more mean-spirited, and it all just makes me want to just stay home and never go anywhere ever again and save up my money so that hopefully one day I could buy myself a small home in the middle of the forest and live peacefully amongst nature. I want to say that my brain is exaggerating about how bad it's gotten out there, but also...no.

✩ I've been very deep into my personal self-care/spiritual practice lately. Working through @lizelayne's Water Your Soul course has been a delightful pause in my day. I'm reading @debrasilverman_astrology's The Missing Element, which is very enlightening, and I've been listening to the audio lectures of @alanwattsorg. LOTS of journaling happening in this corner. I sometimes wish I had more time in my day to do more of this. But lately, I've been having to find little pockets of time to read, work on a lesson, or listen to a lecture while I work. But it's been good.

Anyway, I hope everyone is well. Happy May the 4th!  xx
  • privacy
  • terms
  • about
  • contact
  • treat me

© 2022 aerialovely is loved and cared for by Tiffany Julia