"I've always been an adventurer. Always ready for my next journey..."

This is Ari Monet. She's a human and artist based in Northern California with a passion for nature, the arts, and people. Through her art, she wishes to convey her passions, values, and educate others on sustainability, self-sufficiency, and more.

01/07/24

choosing myself

Ariana's Moodboard for 2024

my 2024 moodboard. bright colors, new places to explore, this year is my year

          This year I'm excited to start living how I want to live. I had been raised to be so selfless and detached from my own wants and desires. So much so that, outside of my basic needs being met, those desires were basically non-existent. For years now, I've been slowly breaking out of the comfort-zone I had learned to survive in, pushing the limits on what I thought made me palatable to the outside world. But at this point I've come to understand that I cannot live inside this extraordinarily small box. I've grown too much as a person to fit and even if I tried it would require cutting off parts of myself that I can no longer live without. But now like poorly maintained garden, it's time to show myself some love. Time to clean up the weeds in my life and let my flowers grow.          The end half of 2023 was rough. For myself and the people of the world as a whole. Not to disregard the pain and horrors still occurring in the world, as they have affected me in their own ways. But I let my hubris catch up to me in October. I thought I'd be able to find work in a different field, that I actually wanted to work in, quite easily and basically waited until I barely had any money in my hands before I got desperate with my search. Too be fair, I really didn't know what I was up against and my previous searches for work where short and successful. Though I could have done more research on the troubles that had lain before me... it is now January and I've found something. Not to mention that I had been teetering on the knife's edge of financial ruin, my mental health has been on life-support for some time now. Luckily with the new position and possibly a second job on the way, I've been able to recover enough to see the joy in things again.          Like the images on my moodboard suggest, this is my year of joy, abundance, creativity, nourishment, exploration, action and lastly of myself. I will be practicing being a fully fledged human with all of the emotions, needs, wants, and dreams in the whole package. I encourage you to do the same. Live. You've only got one of you and you don't know how much time you really have. So live like you want to, be who you want to be, taste the joys of the world and find that peace. And most importantly, don't do it alone. They say things are better with friends so go out there and make some new ones if you want/need to. You're gonna be ok, you have no other choice.May you live a wonderful life,Ariana

11/12/23

change

a bright sunny spring day in California. i took this when i was out on a mini road-trip

          I remember hearing time and time again, that people are afraid of change. That change is to be feared, like some evil force or eldritch being. Something that cannot be reasoned with and was purely out of one's control. I can surely sympathize with that fear. Most of my life, change brought about uncertainties littered with hardship, pain, and even more uncertainties. After many years of "being at the mercy of change," I began to grow angry. At first this anger being directed at myself, then others around me. I quickly learned to think about where that anger should be directed toward and why it these changes were happening to me. I started to understand that these changes that brought me such fear and pain, were changes out of my control and that most of the change I had experienced was out of my control.
           "So what can I control?" I wondered. "How can I stop this from happening?" "Is this really out of my control?" So many questions with such few answers. But I had kept asking. Kept wondering what was it that I was missing? What was it that I could do? And over time, I began to wield my curious nature as a tool for my freedom. Like learning how to use a screwdriver for the first time, I stumbled. Jabbed my fingers a few times and kept stumbling. But in that stumbling, I added more and more to my cardboard box of a tool shed. Going from a little soggy box to a cob building with solar panels and a myriad of well maintained and improved tools. As I learned how to use change to help myself and those around me, I started to see that change had occurred within me. One could argue, change molded me into the person who I am today.
           Change. Some fear it, I wield it. I hope that one day we can collectively look to change as something we can look to for joy, hope, and freedom.