Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz!
First and foremost, happy first day of Lizmas! I can’t believe that the holidays are here and that 2021 is about to come to an end! I hope that everyone stays safe and healthy with family during this holiday season, and you spend the remainder of the year spending time with those you love!
In true Lizmas tradition, I always like to re-introduce myself to the blog, especially now since many of my posts these days are more creative pieces instead of posts about me and my own life. Also, tons of things change within the year so why not introduce myself to all the newcomers, veteran blog readers, and those who just pass by!
So hi! I’m Liz!
I’m very much still a kpop collector; mainly a Victon collector. While in 2020, most of my time was spent on building my kpop collection, I definitely took a step back from collecting this year. Last year, I was able to splurge on my collection and constantly buy things for it, but since returning back to work, I have to be more cautious about my spending and only purchase things when I have extra funds to buy them, especially because the remainder of my collection are more on the rarer side, which can get really pricey. While I haven’t dropped collections, I did stop collecting a lot of them, and mainly just focus on my Viction and Seungsik collection!
I’m now a penpal writer! Earlier this year, I decided to join in on a penpal project my friend created within the kpop community. After really enjoying the process and actually getting a couple of more penpals a long the way, I decided to actually take it a bit ore seriously and create an Instagram page dedicated to my penpalling! Since then, I’ve made snail mail friendships throughout the country, and even internationally as well! Being a penpal has helped me keep my mind busy during bad depressive episodes and anxiety attacks and it keeps me creative! If you’d like to see how my penpal life is, you can follow me on Instagram at @/lizslettercafe !
I had bariatrics surgery back in July. If you guys follow the Overexposed series, you would know that earlier this year, I had weight loss surgery. It was something I was planning to do all the way back in December 2019, but due to COVID, it’s been a very long awaiting process, but here we are – almost halfway into the first year post-op! In the time I’m writing this, I officially lost 55 pounds in total, but who knows how much it’ll be by the time this gets published! If you want to learn more about my own unique process of post-op life, definitely check out the Overexposed series; I talk about some of the most unnoticed and taboo topics of the process!
I still very much believe energies and things you put out into the world, especially within the last year. This year, I did a lot of reevaluating about the way I handled some of my past and the things that held significance in my life. While I thought that I was able to not let my past get the best of me or trigger me whenever things felt familiar to it, I really had to think about what was it that made things difficult. Earlier this year, I decided to take a different approach to things, and I just told myself that the more I would run away and avoid the things from my past, the more it affected my relationships with people who are currently in my life. So, I decided to let things go and forgive myself and those around me. I reconnected with my ex and since then have been on a really good slate! Of course, the things that happened in the past and those feelings I had keep me focused on myself and reminding myself to always put myself first. I don’t hold onto the bad energy I use to carry anymore, and I feel so much better and lighter because of it. I feel like once my energy changed, life just felt so much better in my opinion, and I’m happy I took the risk for myself.
I learned that I am a boundaries-needed type of person. One of the things that I failed to realize sooner in my life was that I wasn’t a good person for needing and wanting boundaries with the people in my life. I am sympathetic to those around me and will always be there for the ones I love, but I’ve been in situations where people took my kindness for weakness and I lost a lot of my own wants and needs by putting them second to those around me. It took me awhile to realize that needing boundaries isn’t being selfish, it’s being proactive and there for me when I need to. For the most part, I’ve lost people who haven’t been accepting of me needing my space and boundaries, but for the most part, those around me have been understanding that I’m in my late 20’s, and in order for me to get where I want to be, I need some space and time to take care of myself and just do what I need to do.
I think that’s it for the most part! I hope you guys enjoyed this first day of Lizmas and here’s to the next eleven days!
Letters From Liz. 