Coming to the beach also can means exposing your body to thousands of strangers that may have their towel too close to your taste. Every year it seems that the first day out on the beach becomes hard to strip down your clothes to expose your skin to everyone. We all come from very clothed seasons to the extreme of not even needing a jacket at night.

Since I can remember, I hated the pressure to take my clothes right after I placed my towel in the sand. My mom would always wanted me to not overthink it, but I am not sure that pressure was helping. I am always the person that look the most pale. Comments would and still come my way to be careful with the sun, “Oh my, did you even got sun this year? You look like a ghost!” type of situation. Now I don’t mind being the palest one, but I am just surprised of how much people expose themselves to the sun without thinking about health issues later. In Portugal it seems that there is a culture of the more tan you are, the prettiest you are during summer. I am just not one of those that can or want to get into that trend.

As I prepared myself to go for my first swim, I took my knitted old top and shorts off. While I was walking to the water, the more I thought on exposing therapy. The fear of being looked or judged by others on our body is something common to all of us, specially when you are getting older and your body thankfully is keeping up with you. I cannot think that I will look like my 13 year old self when those years have passed me long time ago, that just cannot be a wish. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be that age now either, to much uncertainty and heart broken situations in our hands.

I am 27 years old and I look like one. No shame in this. The exposition of these fears I see it as healthy. The more days I go to the beach, the more comfortable I become with taking out those clothes without fear. I am aware that maybe next year I will have the same initial thoughts in the beginning of the beach season, but wearing something out of our comfortable zone in a safe environment may be the best exercise to prepare for the hot months ahead.

Now four days have passed and I become more comfortable with my body. My skin is pale as the sand, I applied three times 50+ sunscreen to make sure I don’t burn myself and read my book in all laying and sitting down positions without shame of by stomach not being flat at all times. I am not sure when the relationship with our body will become better as we get older, but I believe we need to be realistic with our expectations that can make so much damage to ourselves.

We all struggle with body image, some more than others, but don’t let that thought consume you when you want to curl in your book as you would if you had a big t-shirt on. I am grateful that my body looks like my 27th old self and I am not 13 anymore. Go to the beach and wear that good trusty bikini and feel your best.

All the best,

-T.

Every year I try to come back to Portugal (my home country) twice a year. It appears to be always in extreme seasons, summer or winter. I am currently in my first time back this year. For some reason the last 7 months I have been away seemed both long and short. The sensation of being back into a reality I once knew so deep into my bones and now not even my main address is located in, seems odd. I look around in the drive coming from the airport and notice some new buildings, others were repainted, others seemed to be forgotten. Somethings don’t seem to change even if half of the year has passed and I keep having the urge to come and check how everything is looking from this side of the world. I arrive with a premade list of all of the things I want to do, to eat, where to see the sunset, which friends I need to catch up with, all combined in my notes app.

In my first years, I struggled from being distance from my culture. The more time you spent outside, the more you find another version of yourself. It doesn’t mean a better one, but as everyone here or anywhere, people continue to grow, so I did too but in another culture than mine. I found a great group of friends from all over the world, have some good Portuguese people there as well to be reminded of what it feels like being one, got used to other type of bureaucracies and a lifestyle.

In the beginning of this year, I made a big decision to remain in Sweden for at least the next few years with buying my first apartment there. It felt odd that my first “home” would be in a street I had to learn how to say. A word with an accent I had to gain to sound less foreign to others. When the opportunity to buy came, a pro’s and con’s list was made against both cities. Nowhere is perfect, we win some but we lose some. I feel extremely grateful to be able to experience two cultures that present so many differences from each other, but I can see the positive in both. I get to come to a warmer and sunny city when some are stuck in the deep winter in Sweden, but I get to experience all the very clear seasons of the year in Scandinavia.

Now I visit my childhood bedroom in my mom’s house and feel that it is stuck in time. I make some changes, hang some frames into the wall to match more my current self , but still I open the drawers and they are filled with clothes that don’t fit me anymore or represent a time when I was trying to find myself through them. Some people I meet in Portugal ask me: “ When are you planning to move back?”. I am not sure I have an answer to that question, but I don’t think I need to know today either. For now I found a good balance and both places represent me, so if I am enjoying my life, I don’t believe I need to line up my future now, since I am living the present.

All the best

-T.

my latest vlog:

The point is that seasons are meant to be celebrated. For summer, we take out our swimsuits and revisit our linen pants. For autumn, a cozy knitted sweater comes onto our shoulders, along with some rainy boots. For winter, we may place some lights as decorations, I personally place a star lamp in my window and find ourselves counting the days through milk chocolate coming out of a calendar. And for spring (maybe my favorite) the air seems fresher, time to organize all the warm clothes and duvets back into their boxes, because the flowers are blooming and telling us that something bigger is coming. We spend our lives following this routine every year. Growing up in Portugal, the seasons didn’t seem as defined as I described, it was only when moving to another climate that I saw the real importance of celebrating these changes. Like everyone else, I prefer one season over another, but I can still see the advantages of all of them.

With that said, since summer has been here for almost a month, I want to make some manifestations for this season:

• Swim in nature as much as I can

• Bike everywhere

• Buy those peaches that look expensive

• Wear bright colors

• Book those trips with friends without overthinking

• Plan but also not plan the whole summer

• Read only books that make sense for this season

• Wear sunglasses more often

• Enjoy my balcony every day

• Have dinner outdoors

  ---

Hopefully it is not too late to enjoy the summer with these intentions in mind, but we should never forget that autumn is next. We can only truly enjoy a sunny day if we have the contrast, otherwise we would grow bored of this life. Let’s have fun during all the seasons and enjoy everything each one has to offer.

All the best

T.

One aspect of my life that made me question myself again is my creativity and how I can channel it into something meaningful and turn it into a daily practice. For as long as I can remember, creativity has always been a source of fun in my routine. As we get older, we forget how to play like children. That’s why so many of us (including me) go back to making puzzles, painting by numbers or even working with air-dry clay.

In a past blog post, I mentioned that I had stopped making videos for a while. Well, I checked and according to my channel, my last upload was almost three years ago. I won’t bother tracking them down, since I set all of my old content to private. It felt strange not to have moving images documenting so many parts of my growth over the last few years. All the photos and videos are stuck in my phone gallery, waiting to be stored away on a hard drive one day to keep them safer, but never seeing the light of day.

So I got inspired by what I consume, which is long-form content on YouTube. Since getting a television, my consumption of the platform has become more patient, finding pure joy in long narratives and beautiful imagery over the course of 20-minute videos. So last week, I challenged myself to pick up the camera again, but this time differently. These were the rules I set for myself:

1. No big cameras; quality is relative. I started with my iPhone to be more practical and get the flow going, Then I picked up my old camera, which doesn’t make me feel awkward and still meets my functional need.

2. Selection is key. A lot of moments happen, but I am mindful of what I want to record. No need to record everyday just for the sack of it.

3. Changing languages. My previous videos were filmed in my native language (Portuguese), but my current daily life is in English, so the language needed to adapt.

4. Have fun. Don’t make a big deal out of it and make sure I am enjoying the process and creating for myself.

So, if you’ve made it this far and you’re still curious to see what my video documentation looks like, you can now watch it here:

Here are the visuals I am inspired by the week:

Maybe this is a sign for you to pick up that old hobby that you thought you had retired from, perhaps it’s time for another try on it. Even if no one else watches them, you can still summarise your phone gallery in a better way.

All the best,

T.

To end your mystery, the artist I went to see was Olivia Dean. Last September I bought tickets the moment they were announced and decided that this was going to be the best concert of the year for me - maybe even one of the best of my life. The show was amazing, even better than I imagined. For reference, my partner gave it a 9/10 score despite only coming because I asked him to. I was surprised that he knew so many songs, but apparently I have been singing for the past years, even thought I hadn’t even noticed.

The vibes were lovely: girls dressed with polka dots (myself included), boyfriends being super supportive of their partners’ taste and an atmosphere that felt like a vintage show, with no phones in sight - just people enjoying and dancing. I walked out of the arena feeling powerful and grateful to have experienced almost two hours of my favourite music. I came home with the lyrics still buzzing at the tip of my tongue, my feet hurting from jumping around out of excitement, and with the feeling that the strangers in the audience and I had somehow bonded.

This was the vibe of the night:

The moment I discovered Olivia Dean was years ago, when she was still releasing EPs. I believe she appeared through Spotify’s algorithm, in one of those curated genre playlists of Neo-soul, and I clicked immediately. At the time, there wasn’t so much information about her and her creative process online, but for some reason, I felt she was destined for much more. Now, she’s a globally recognised artist, performing sold-out tours in front of thousands of people screaming her lyrics back to her on stage, and she even won a Grammy.

However, for me experiencing that concert wasn’t about the new songs or how popular she became. It was about witnessing an artist you admire grow while the rest of the world is still getting to know her. Weirdly enough, I felt proud of her, even though I don’t know her personally, because I believe we can admire the rise of strangers - especially when they genuinely appreciate their audience in return. I feel proud for having supported her career before her big breakthrough. There’s often this misconception that you can only like an artist before they become mainstream, but in this case, I think success has simply given her the opportunity to perform her songs in the way she may have always dreamed of. She looked genuinely happy, yet still incredibly down-to-earth about what this stage of her career means to her, and I was so glad to be in that arena on a Sunday night having the best time.

Now, a week after this concert, I still have the setlist buzzing in my mind, and for the first time, when I hear the music I am placed back into that arena. One particularly interesting aspect of the concert was that outside of the arena, PR representatives were handing out perfume samples from the fragrance campaign that Olivia Dean is currently fronting. As a result, almost everyone wore the scent inside the venue, and now, whenever I catch that smell, my memory immediately returns to the emotions I felt during the concert. I spray it three times on my daily clothes before leaving the house and instantly remember how glowing and alive I felt that night.

All the best,

T.

Individually, we are all private people. We write in a personal journal or we may even create protected notes on our phone. All of these acts are in search of some privacy in our own world. The objects are ours, with no other eyes to see, but we still reach for that extra privacy/secrecy, to feel completely free and safe expressing ourselves, no judgment. But are we even private in on our devices at all?

I reflect on how those elite members may not even want to “be” public, but unfortunately it comes attached to the job. If you appear in a movie screen, the chances are that being an actor made you a public figure. If you don’t play the part you may be rejected and judged by society on the way you act. In this society it seems that the more public you are, the more popularity you may get - to the point that even children and babies are exposed to that mindset before they even have a saying. The dangerous of that type of exposure, is that some may have good intentions, some may feel envy and wish them harm. That’s the risk of being public in general.

As you are reading this, you may wonder: this blog is not private, nor is the Instagram account that is connected to it (@intotheprocess_). Well, the beauty of balance is a essential. Of course, the images and texts that I place in this very public blog or Instagram are curated and organized before coming to life. The process of writing these texts is private, hidden within my unpublished section or closed pinboards, where I can collect, without pressure, all the images I need for this week’s visual references.

Everything we see on social media or on the internet was curated and chosen, so don’t think it happened by coincidence. Every post featuring collective images from a camera roll, or an engagement announcement is consciously. The worrying part is when the unconscious takes over and we let ourselves go when it comes to the most important task for ourselves: protecting ourselves and carefully selecting what is shown to the outside world.

I believe the decision of showing something to an endless public should always be well thought out, with full awareness of consequences and precautions involved. We should never place ourselves in situations where we later wished we had been more private before. Even in this society, you still have two choices: being public or being private. Which one do you choose?

All the best,

T.

When large gaps of time between classes appeared in my schedule, I would go and buy a student ticket (between 3 and 5 euros) and watched the most random movie with all the older retired people who knew about this hidden gem in the city. It was us and the duration of a movie - nothing else. I would then go on with my day, going back to class, with a better perspective of life and with hopes that I would one day direct a movie. How I miss those days. Now that old place has closed its doors and was sold to a bank - the most heartbroken event of my teenage years.

It’s so lovely to romanticize our own life - otherwise who will? I think a bit of romance of our perspective is the best medicine for a happier life. We may need to see things from a different view, be an audience of our own existence. How we place the table for dinner in a pretty way, how our messy unmade bed is nice to look at, how a lipstick mark in a morning mug is a mark of our being - so many possible scenarios that we can look with different eyes. I believe people should romanticize their own lives more, because it’s fun to be an outside spectator.

Small changes, such as writing our morning pages in a nice café or wearing that piece of clothing we were saving for a special occasion in our daily routine, can make a difference. I have been such an outfit saver person for as long as I can remember, and it seems there is never a right time to wear a specific dress or blouse.

Any Pinterest board is a way of manifestation and romanticizing what we want for ourselves. Any visual references placed in these blog posts, are an organized manifestation of what I would like to manifest for myself that week. Even when we discuss and brainstorm about a topic with a close friend over a cup of coffee, we are asking another perspectives on the matter. I rely a lot on my friends for creative projects, decisions on interior design, or even love and career advice. Quickly, my friends become the audience I need to have to make the best decisions for myself without being blinded by my own opinion.

Movies and tv series are exactly that - they romanticize the human experience into a moving image, one that you can relate to and place yourself within. We come out of the cinema wondering how we could be that character, or live in New York like in the movie; you place yourself on the screen without even noticing.

That’s the magic of cinema, we want to be there with them, we may even want to be them, but we come out of that dark room wondering, if we had their lives, who would we be? What would we feel? What would we do? It’s amazing how romanticizing a perspective can open new directions in our own vision.

We may even come home and, with the energy you came out of the movies, you book your next trip to a place you always wondered - but maybe you just needed a bit of a push to go for it, be more adventurous or reckless, all because of a storyline that impacted us. That is cinema at its best. I could go on and on about my love for cinema and I wish I could go every week to remind myself that spontaneous self, but for now, I select those I think will impact me the most to consume on a bigger screen.

All the best,

T.

This past week, my partner arrived home and said: “Let’s watch an old movie, the ones that are super slow”. I thought it was interesting that we cannot rely on the current media to consume something less upbeat. It seems that the act of decompressing cannot be done the same way with our current media, since it appears to be too fast for our own liking. Sometimes a movie from the 80s does wonders on a Friday night to feel completely relaxed and more present in the moment.

Personally, these last couple of weeks have been a time of reset, again. I use the word "again” because resets are just a way of realigning with what may have become too blurry to focus in our routine. Journaling of course has been very present between these times, but mostly focusing on only one media at a time. These couple of years I have been a really good active reader, according to my Goodreads, but it seems that I became unfocused at the beginning of 2026. This week, during my lunchtime from my corporate job, I went to a bookshop in the train station without expectations and bought a book that sounded interesting enough to get me out of the rut. I ended up reading “Audition" by Katie Kitamura which turned out to be a lovely novel and it was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.

Something to take note of is: I moved apartments in the last couple of weeks and since then our internet connection hasn’t been the greatest in the new space, so analogue media has been my main consumption. The big difference I have experienced is that time seems to slow down when you consume with analogue objects. This consumption seems to give you ownership of your attention and time, by deciding what to interact with, but mostly consuming with a purpose. I cannot tell you how many nights I end up scrolling in my phone and feeling exhausted when it’s time to turn off the lights. This unhealthy habit sometimes even transfers to my dreams, with topics I was bombarded with minutes before closing my eyes. Now that the internet seems to be more available, I find myself missing when it wasn’t. The dynamic of the space and free time has changed completely when those type of distractions are just one click away, so I now try to force myself to think and consider before going to start an endless scroll on social media.

The big question here is: what are we looking for there? Have we ever felt that we found it after one or two hours? And why does our brain decide to continue with this habit even though we may feel horrible after it? My conclusion is: we are all addicted to this drug called scrolling or our phones.

Just to clarify those who are reading this, I am not ditching my television or smartphone, but identifying changes that need to be made, which is always an improvement. I struggle with feeling productive while consuming online content all the time, something that reflects on my own self-perception, as I aim to feel fulfilled with my actions. Of course laziness and unproductively are important parts of our weekly routine, but the more at peace I feel with what I consume or the way I consume it, the better I feel about myself. Productivity, in this sense, means that I have not abandoned myself to scrolling, as I previously did. Boredom is super important to experience and the moment we are never bored, for me that is a red flag in my own living.

So here is what I did instead of scrolling or watching TV:

• Journaling (to do lists, manifestation, journal entries, drawings)

• Sent some postcards

• Read a book

• Tried a new recipe

• Paint-by-numbers (new hobby alert!)

• Arranged my clothes and made a selection

• Started a new furniture renovation project

• Listened to a podcast with full attention

• Went biking

• Played beach volleyball with friends

• Played UNO

At the end of the day, what we consume will affect how we practice our creativity and we may be neglecting the best part of our selves for an endless page. I write this as a reminder for those who need it to click away from their phone or screens and pick up a hobby/habit that does not include this addiction that consumes us slowly everyday. I will also keep challenging myself on this so hopefully my creativity improves along the way.

All the best,

T.

With a new season, changes also occur as we adapt to a new environment, more movement and a moment to reflect on what we want to recover or change around us. One of the manifestations I made at the beginning of the year was to be more creative and stick with the same hobbies, since I found myself in past years jumping between them. As a creative person, I want to learn and practice every form of art. This seems to intensify during the warmer months, it seems that the environment has an effect on me. I want to become everything all at once, especially what was asleep during the winter months.

As much as I would love to get deeper into my passion for design, photography or cinema, I still don’t want to forget the hobbies that keep me company now. There are phases when I get so interested and inspired by an art form that an obsession is created inside of me to learn the history and its processes as well as I can. I wish to produce such pieces and challenge myself to reach the same outcome. Meanwhile, my knitting projects are probably feeling neglected in the basket near my sofa, as I have found another medium to be entertained by, after my working hours. This is something I have always struggled with: being blindly invested in only one hobby.

The exposure we have of so many art forms through our own algorithm, by artists or art lovers that share wonderful works, intrigues you on wondering more of it. You are presented with another reality and your wondering eye seems unable to stop. We begin to desire it, to compare and to understand how the artists made the art itself: Why those colors? What tools did they use? Can I reach the same result? All these questions start to pop up as the interest grows. Sometimes they don’t find the answers, or the interest itself doesn’t seem to reach an end and at that moment we are reminded of the sweater we once started to knit a few weeks ago.

We go back to the sofa with the effort to sit and untangle the problem where we left off, when we placed the knitting project away and to force ourselves to face those difficulties that we encountered with that old hobby. Now that I write this experience down it seems that I may sound scattered, but I believe this may happen to people with multiple interests. We feel splint, unable to to keep up with the other topics’ updates, feeling that we need to divide our time so preciously and hunt for an outcome.

If you are the lucky ones that is still searching a hobby, here are some other art forms that I have been enjoying to explore:

SEWING

Interior Design/Architecture:

Graphic Design:

As spring arrives, the flowers start to blossom through the effort we place in the garden. We need to see our artistic process as a vast garden full of plants; sometimes some are hibernating, while others are very much blooming. Time and patience are the core of any garden, from which we may need to learn a thing or two.

Speaking about planting more flowers, I have cleaned out an old instagram account to be an extension of research for these posts: @intotheprocess_

I hope you find the beginning of this new season, as refreshing as I do.

All the best

T.

You may not even consider that you document your life so much, but every image that is kept in your gallery on your phone is a need for a sort of proof for your memory. It may be a reference to something beautiful or even a screenshot on a movie you are interested in, even though we all know that we never return to review those same screen captures. Or maybe writing down your tasks into your agenda helps you get a timeline of your time which, in a sense, means you are documenting your actions.

I remember starting actively documenting my day-to-day life when I was in high school with journaling. It was maybe the introduction of a graphic diary as a mandatory task in our drawing class that started all of this desire. The possibility of placing myself into a context when reading a journaling page of my state of mind and creativity always made me want to place a date on the corner of the page for future reference. Now I revisit it, as I wish to understand myself a bit better, all those years ago, for a comparison to my present self.

Until this day, those journals are precious, but the ones I feel dearest to me are from my early 20s, where I combined my personal thoughts and creative notes into one notebook. Those reflect my early challenges and creativity, when everything seemed to be important to document, but with the goal of something bigger. I became the biggest advocate for journaling, since it can also help you process some of those challenges you may be facing. Your thoughts become a tangible object, and you may see the other side of the coin more clearly.

But why do people need to document? Are we all afraid of forgetting? Or is it time that runs through our fingers and we just want to hold onto that present for a bit longer? I came to understand that, for me, it’s super important to keep those memories tangible for a possible future. It is the act of revisiting those memories that keeps me aware of the path I took and how far I have come, otherwise my sense of time can become abstract and nothing seems to have the right sense of progress. I am not sure I will ever stop documenting my life or those around me, but how interesting that this act of preserving memories has become such a natural habit in my life almost 10 years now. I imagine future generations reading through those personal entries and getting a sense of the person I was at the time. Hopefully they can recognise general feelings that everyone even their mother/grandmother experienced once upon a time.

With time we develop a language and taste for that act, not everything is worth keeping and selection is our best friend. You may not even notice that you select too, but if you have an Instagram account that itself is a curating action towards what you want to keep in your feed for others to see, and a selection of your life. I believe that the presence of social media platforms has developed the eye for curating our own lives without even noticing the impact of developing a style. We select up to 10 images that turn into a carousel, or publish a 10-second story to capture something from that day. All these acts speak loudly about curation and the need that humans have for documenting their existence.

Even if you don’t want to recognise it, we will always have the need to document. It’s part of our existence; it’s a natural need to track our time. But we can always find new creative ways to tell time apart. Here are some of them:

• Writing letters to friends, parents, or even a penpal

• Photo booth images

• Notes in a book (I always mark the date and place where I bought that book on the first page)

• Hobbies diary (including projects you are working on, inspiration and material samples)

• Buy postcards and write on the spot about the trip, maybe even sending them to yourself

• Keeping tangible photographs/albums

So I challenge you to document your next week and see if that can become a useful habit for strengthening your sense of time.

All the best,

T.

This week I decided to pick up again sewing as a hobby. I initially bought my sewing machine 4 years ago, when I ambitiously thought it was a great idea to sew a dress for a wedding I was attending. (Spoiler: I went with a dress bought from the store.) As much as my ambition to create most of the times works, sometimes I just come out more frustrated with myself. Maybe it’s my perfectionist self or maybe it’s a common thing for everyone. I remember when I discovered I was a perfectionist in my early 20s, a friend of my mom mentioned to me during a conversation, and I was quite surprised that I never considered myself that way. That same characteristic always holds me back especially when creating.

I heard this podcast episode and I resonated when she said “I am not using my degree in a traditional sense, because of the pressure of making as a career. Which became a beast, which ended up me not wanting to do it anymore.”. This topic raised an interesting point about why I wanted to run away from an artistic career. For my master’s degree, I intentionally moved away from the arts I had spent the last 6 years studying, in order to live off something else besides my creativity. One of the key points in this discovery was the recognition that I didn’t want to be a freelancer. I didn’t have the profile of to be one, as much as I admire those who are. The uncertainty of having financial income at the end of the month made me move away from my first dream, maybe out of fear, but mostly by listening to my needs. As the years passed, I still have that creativity in me and also the dream in some way, but at the same time I am happy of free my income out from my creativity. For my “second” career, I decided to go for marketing, as it is still being much connected to creativity in a sense and also to the visual aspect that can be incorporated into the processes. Of course, within marketing there are multiple departments and I always tried to place myself where I can interact with the creatives and be present in their processes. I discovered creativity in another sense, working with a team and seeing the impact you have on a brand’s image and data that proves that impact. This shift in careers was also an important process for discovering other parts of myself besides being an artist. I was challenged to look into what I could be besides my art.

Creativity can be everything and everywhere; we just need to seek it. Our corporate jobs don’t define how creative we are. We can embody that dream after work, you may just need to block your agenda after your working hours. I have become at peace with the amount of creativity I consume and produce daily and I have become thankful that I can turn off when I want, something that I struggled within my “first” career. It seemed I was being consumed by it. Everywhere I looked it was a possible idea for a project, or the personal struggles of producing any type of meaningful work. I produced, I showed, I had an idea, I needed to publish. Everything I did needed to be monetized in order to make sense of the time invested into it. Of course, I still share some bits of my creations, by writing on this blog, or sharing an image of my final sweater, but there is a difference now. I am doing it because I like it, not because it’s expected of me or because I need to do it. There is no creative deadline.

For many years I shared my life on YouTube and as I was changing my career, I discovered that I liked video production but didn’t enjoy the pressure I felt to show my life. So I decided to stop and see how that felt like. Of course I missed the documentation that provided me, as well as the action of production and filming, but at end I didn’t. I became more private about what I produce and show throughout the years, as well as more present in those moments. I decided to stop the pressure itself and just enjoy the process alone.

I believe that every human being is creative, even though they may say they are not. I went to art school and discovered my artistic eye, some just haven’t discovered yet. I admire how everyone can see things from different perspectives; we just need to make time to practice that skill. Nowadays with the easy access to distractions through technology, we may forget to set aside that time block in our daily agendas. So I encourage you to leave your phone in the kitchen and be creative in another space for one hour. Let yourself be bored and you will see that your brain will seek creativity. Practice that eye, because you may discover something new about yourself.

For those who need some inspiration, here is what I did to feed my creative beast these weeks:

• finished a knitting sweater (2 months later)

• started another knitting project

• sewing projects for myself and friends

• tried embroidery (love the cross-stitch)

• baked with limited ingredients (it came out good)

All the best,

T.

VIDEOS:

On the topic of exploring creative processes, I recommend that for you to watch these two videos featuring two artists from the YouTube channel Hometown Journal. The interviewer has deep conversations about on their work, especially exploring how their creative process looks like. They explore how the world can seem so different and the impact that thoughts and society have on artistic expression. It becomes important to create a safe space, even if it’s a corner in a room, to let yourself explore the creativity that we all have within us.

VISUAL REFERENCES:

The creative process can be frustrating at times, but in some way there is always some growth within it. The distance that is necessary for us to take from our creative process is healthy. We take a break because of the frustration we are experiencing with ourselves. It may be that the project is not going well, the materials are not ideal or there is just too much on our mind to even focus. Whatever it is, it is important to stop. Time is a key aspect in any creative process. We look at ourselves in the past and can hopefully recognize some growth - how far we have come, everything we have achieved and the person we are today.

Art acts the same way. Every time I look at my old works I see details and potential that I couldn’t see with my blindness of the process. Maybe I needed almost 5 years of distance from it to see the real potential. Time in art is like healing, we let it mature the pieces, while the artist themselves changes. It is so easy to compare ourselves in the moment with mindsets of “the project is not good enough”, but how I would love to go back and trust the process.

This reflection of growth and maturity over time within art is also applicable to any aspects of life. That may be the biggest lesson I took with me after my studies and that is why I think art school is all about self-discovery.

So I am picking up the brush again and trying it again. I hope you do too, whatever brush you use.

All the best,

T.

As the second week of the year starts, coincidentally I need to buy another journal. The beginning of any journal always seems a bit daunting. We don’t want to ruin the first two pages, so we just end up gluing them together. If our private objects are going to be for us, why do we feel so much pressure for it to be perfect? One of the reasons may be that “if you produce, you should show it” mindset. This mindset has always placed my creative practice in a numb state, to the point where I stopped enjoying creating. I have been seeing a lot of artists (not only in fine arts, but also musicians) mentioning in their social media that they need to become influencers to be successful in this society. But is it not social media’s disposability what kills the originality of art? Or is it a great strategy to demystify the creative process for possible consumers? Is the end consumer of art even interested in the process of creation?

As for myself, I follow artists, not only out of curiosity about their processes, but also to find inspiration in my daily use. Some I even found through my algorithm, so here are some of them:

PAINTING:

I always enjoyed the game that light and shadows play. One cannot live without the other, so the connection is inevitable. These two elements are the main characters in the work from the American artist Mary Royall. I first encountered her art as a suggested profile to follow by my algorithm on Instagram. I was immediately captivated by her colour choices. The deeper we go into her social media presence, we understand the connection that memory, light, space and even sexuality have in her work. The interesting online presence she demonstrated, specifically when showing herself physically painting her canvas, the more I could understand the context of her paintings. It seems that the moment I was introduced and welcomed to this artist’s space and environment, the more I could relate to her work.

It is interesting to reflect on how much an artist as a person weighs on the way we see the final art. How much of the artist do we have to know to understand them? Is it a key factor to read the biography before entering into their world? Can we exclude the art from the artist at any point? On this topic there is a book I want to read called Monsters: What Do We Do With Great Art By Bad People? by Claire Dederer, which reflects on when we do admire the art, but not the artist itself.

In some way art will always depend without question on exposure. Currently the act of exposure has many layers attached to it from online spaces (social media, website, news, …) to offline. The act of exposure is needed in all art forms, even when the art is a physical object or space.

ARCHITECTURE:

Let’s talk about architecture. In my many years of using the online space, architecture has been one of the art forms that seems to keep appearing in my digital algorithm. Before the digital era, architecture was featured mostly in articles in magazines or large coffee table books. However, with digitalisation, it seems possible to enter to someone’s home through our own devices. The reason I consume this content is because I find these tours are quite relaxing and extremely inspirational when decoding my own space. Even though I do not have even a quarter of the space they may present, for me it’s a matter of understanding the potential that any space has, whether big or small.

I leave you here with some of the videos I keep returning to as references. Two houses owned by two designers that have incorporated their own artistic identity into their space. How I wish I could be there in person to see more closely their choices. For now I am invited by their own perspective. Through, most of these videos, I become an admirer of the artist themselves and their creative work, just being allowed to have a tour of their personal space. We enter to these house tours out of curiosity, watching their houses through a window - only this time a digital one.

VISUAL REFERENCES:

In honor of the topic perception and online, here are some visual inspirations that I want to keep in mind for this week:

At the end of any artist or studio website, you can find the logos of today’s social media monopoly. This has became a must: to be present online in order to be considered to exist in the consumer’s world. So not only is the consumer haunted by these needs of technological demands, but so is the art world. As consumers let’s take our daily use of these platforms for the development of our creative activities.

All the best,

T.

As the new year arrives, I have the tradition to write down my personal, professional, and creative goals into a couple of pages. I see creativity as a time to play, to be a child, to try and fail, to express what I have in mind. Even though, this may sound pretty, the raw version is that I become my own stopper. It may be the overconsumption we are bombarded everyday by our smart technologies. Either way, the reason to create this online space is to share my creative process, as well to give the stage to possible inspirations that can come as a lovely surprise to those who read this text.

Here is what I consumed in week 1, January 2026:

Philosophy/Writing:

I initially found this interesting documentary through my algorithm, by seeing a frame from it. This documentary presents the thinking process of the book The Burnout Society and the journey of the contemporary South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han. After watching it, I became interested in reading other works from the same author, as I felt closer to his own creative process. I am specifically interested in reading the book Saving Beauty, since it discusses how beauty is portrayed today and the connection to consumption. How forms and shapes are literally shaping our minds and our sense of beauty.

This makes me wonder: maybe if we didn't consume online, beautification would be different - but how different would it be? Now it seems that only round lines are pretty, from phones to shoes, from makeup products to lamp designs. The rounder the prettier. When did we stop enjoying pointy edges? Is the consumer’s eye trained to enjoy and relax more with round forms? And how round is too much round? (A point to come back in the future)

Photography:

In my weekly photography research, I stumbled upon this inspiring interview from the lens perspective of the Belarusian artist Aleksandr Babarikin. One topic discussed in the interview was how “(…) the future of photography will depend on the development of art in general and art as a reflection of society.”. This concept unravelled the thought of how the events and disruption we are currently living will reflect in art production in general. It’s interesting to consider that the art we create today may need to be produced faster, according to the rhythm expected by society. However, to my surprise it seems that the word for 2026 when it comes to consumption or hobbies is “analogue”. It feels as though yesterday, the more modern you were, the better you are keeping up with society, but now that same society is looking for alternative ways to reverse this rhythm. I cannot ignore the possible connection to the evolution of AI in today’s world and the necessity that humans need to take control on the fast uncontrollable growth of technology.

The deeper we go into reading this interview, the more we understand the direct connection to painting as an artistic reference for this artist. Even thought, the use of the final media is a digital camera, a more slower artistic practice is placed as a foundation to understand the fast caption that a camera allows. An interesting connection of medias, when slowness and speed come together. It may even be a fascinating challenge, to try to replicate a painting into a digital image, as different those two medias are, but both connected with the creation of an image.

Visual References:

In honor of the word “analogue”, as described previously, here are some visual inspirations that I want to keep in mind for this week. Not all elements need to be absorbed into my creative process, but a pitch of this salt can be taken into account. Also here are some practices for those wanting to slow down the rhythm:

• Journaling

• Collages/weaving with paper

• Any fiber practice (knitting/crochet)

• Selection of photographs and creation of an album

• Reading (currently reading: A máquina de fazer espanhóis - Valter Hugo Mãe + Não és tu - Ramani Durvasula)

As unstable as this past year may have felt and also so many changes already happening in such a short time into the new year, let’s all consider to finding some grounding in our creative practices, so we can manage these uncertainties the best way possible.

As my high school drawing professor would say to all his students:

“All the best.”

T.