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?