Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz!
While it’s the most wonderful time of the year for most of us, it’s solely my favorite time of year because the holiday season means it’s also Twelve Letters of Lizmas season!
I always enjoy writing these posts for the holidays; not only does it allow me to write blog posts different from my usual content, but it’s also a great way to recap everything that’s happened in the past year. Also, it’s a blog tradition! We started this tradition on the blog way back in 2017; back when the blog was called ‘TNTH”, or “Today’s News, Tomorrow’s Headline”. Sheesh, remember when the blog was called that? Do any long-time readers remember that? Since then, I’ve always made it my mission to dedicate 12 days out of the month in celebration of the holiday, and the celebration of concluding yet another year. If you would like to read last year’s Lizmas posts, you can read them by clicking here!
Speaking of traditions made here on the blog, every Lizmas we dedicate the first day to a re-introduction of myself. I like updating the introduction each year to not only see what things have changed within the year, but every year I notice the community growing bit and bit, and this allows me the opportunity to introduce myself to those who may not know the writer behind the stories and series on here.
So without further ado, here is my 2023 introduction to everyone who comes across my blog: Hi! My name is Liz!
In 2023, I finally felt one with my body after having weight-loss surgery two years ago. One of my main issues during my weight-loss journey was that there were times when my body did not feel like my own. I fought with body dysmorphia within these last two years and had to constantly remind myself that the body I’m currently in is the same one I had prior to losing all of the weight. I struggled with the belief that my body and I were two different entities that took up separate space. It was a weird ideology that took months to finally break out of, and I think that started to dim away once I found my interest in fashion. I wouldn’t call myself a fashionista, but I find myself getting excited putting outfits together, especially for work. I take pride in my style, and I feel like it’s helped define me as a person and appreciate my body for what it is today. Plus, I always feel great hearing my coworkers compliment my work outfits! Needless to say, 2023 introduced some new interests and hobbies in me that I wouldn’t ever guess I’d have. Which brings me to my next point…
In 2023, I lost a lot of who I once was; whether it was the people in my life or the things I was once interested in. The funny things about going through an entire year and looking back at it is that you look at where you were at the beginning of the year and realize that you never thought the things that you went through during the year would happen. In January 2023, I was very much still into K-Pop. I was still collecting new albums and following what was trending and currently in the K-Pop world’s Top 40 hits. My bedroom walls were still covered in Victon posters and slogans. I was still paying off GOMs for photocards I ordered during Victon’s last comeback the previous year. I still had K-Pop identifying me as a person, just not in the way that it did back in 2020 and 2021.
Also in January 2023, I was very much still into penpal writing. I enjoyed collecting stationery and even journaling in the matching notebooks my friends and I gifted each other for the holiday; if anything was truly identifying me as a person in 2023, it was being a penpal writer. I had 17 penpals at the beginning of the year; I would write letters and prep everything for future letters in advance so that I was able to keep up with the amount of letters that came through the mail. I was going live on Instagram to prep envelopes with other penpal writers in the community, looking up how to become a shop representative for small, stationery shops on Instagram; it was intense, to say the least. But as the year went by, I found my interests changing drastically. I was still listening to K-Pop music, but I had no desire to collect any new albums from groups after Victon’s disbandment in April. I was still writing penpal letters, but I had a hard time rediscovering the love I once had for it after it started to feel more like a part-time job than an actual hobby at some point. In the midst of losing my interest in my hobbies, I also began to lose the people who defined those interests and hobbies in me during the pandemic. In a nutshell, 2023 was a year that required me to do something that I haven’t done since 2020, which was to find my sense of identity once again.
In 2023, I redefined my passion for academia through higher education. When I first graduated with my master’s, I wanted to help college students navigate through their college careers as efficiently and smoothly as possible. It was something that I appreciated my own college advisor back when I was a student; if it wasn’t for my advisor, Jennifer Durando, telling me during my junior year that I would be short 20 credits if I didn’t pick up another minor, I wouldn’t have graduated in time. It was something that I felt needed to change about my college specifically; as faculty and administrators, we needed to communicate with our students better so that didn’t do a disservice to them when it was time for them to graduate. When I got the job at my alumni college Registrar’s Office, I wanted to not only learn how things operated on the administrative side, but I wanted to find ways to advocate for students while following the policies our office enforces.
A couple of months ago, I got promoted to do just that. I now work directly under my boss, learning different things within the area of Historical Records like grade change and repeat policies, investigating special circumstances for students who attended the college before our current record system, and forwarding information to faculty in other departments that might have changed since the last time registration season came around. When graduating grad-school in 2018, I wanted to work in academic advisement to properly advise students on the classes they should take within a semester. I realized that in a way I do just that, but by following policies that we practice within our office. The learning process has made me find love in academia I didn’t think I would love, which is working in higher education administration.
In 2023, I learned that change is inevitable, so you have to learn how to accept it when it happens in your own life. In the past, I always felt this wave of guilt whenever I was going through a time in my life when things were changing. I felt like I was leaving everyone and everything that made me behind when these changes happened, but some of them were truly inevitable and happened without any warning to anyone or anything. At one point, I felt like I was splitting myself into two; one being the person I had known to be within the last two years versus the other being the person I found myself evolving into. After a while, I had to let what was supposed to happen fully happen, and looking back it’s been possibly the biggest lesson I learned not only in 2023 but the biggest lesson I’ve learned in my twenties. I learned this the hard way, but eventually, it’s brought me to a place where I am the happiest, and this is the most authentic version of my current self. Of course, I could be a completely different person this time next year, and that’s okay. Isn’t life about consistent growth as you age?
I am very proud of the person I’ve become this past year; I dealt with the hardships of whatever came my way differently than I did in the past. I didn’t allow it to completely destroy me. I didn’t feel like I was going back to square one with the progress of working on myself. Maybe this is what it feels like to finally mature gracefully into your own.
Letters From Liz. 