Category: Twelve Days of TNTHmas: 2018

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

Merry Christmas to all of TNTH’s readers who celebrate! I hope you are spending it with the people who love you the most, and with people who love you! Twelve Days of TNTHmas was an absolute joy to do and I’m so glad that we got to do it again for the second year in the row. So, with that being said: we’re also going to be celebrating TNTH’s second birthday in January! Which also means…

TNTH’s Anniversary Blogging Celebration starts on TUESDAY, January 1st, 2019!

Like last year, we will be daily blogging every day until January 9th; TNTH’s (as well as mine) birthday! So, that’s the good news. The bad news is: TNTH will be on a mini-hiatus until then! Typically these posts take a lot of preparation to do so I would like for my time and energy to be solely on this, as I want to make this year better than the last one!

I’ll see you guys in a couple of weeks! Although this year was a rocky one, I appreciate anyone who still supported the blog in 2018. I can’t wait to see what the new year has in store for me personally, professionally, and creatively. I hope everyone enters the new year with a refreshing start and cheers to new and better beginnings!

See you in 2019!

-Liz. (:

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

First and foremost, I hope everyone is enjoying TNTHmas thus far; I really can’t believe that we are halfway done with it! Honestly, it does not feel like Christmas is only six days away, and there’s a valid reason why for me, it doesn’t feel like Christmas.

Now, this isn’t me being a Humbag of some sorts; I very much do enjoy the atmosphere of the holiday spirit. I love having Christmas decorations up in my apartment, I enjoy looking at the lit houses at night, and I’m a sucker for Christmas music! Around this time every year, I am wrapping up gifts and putting them under my tree to open them on Christmas Eve, and like the overgrown child I am, I get excited o see all the neat stuff my family gifted to me. This year, though, that’s not happening. Actually, my family and I aren’t celebrating Christmas this year the way we usually do.

2018, to say the least, has been very rough for not just my immediate family, but for my extended family as well. in April, my cousins lost their grandfather on my uncle’s side, and in July, my sister and I lost our grandfather on my mother’s side. My aunt’s family, my family, and especially my grandmother lost a lot this year. The holiday season is especially hard for all sides due to these losses that we had over the year. Also, on top of that, my family recently had a couple of health scares, which left us busy occupied on being there for them in their time of need. So, in the most simple way possible: celebrating Christmas this year just doesn’t feel completely right, and I understand it.

Not celebrating it with gifts and the stress that the holidays carry is teaching me that honestly, Christmas isn’t about all of that. It’s not about buying gifts and wrapping them and stressing out about the quality of your gift. It’s not about buying things on sale and having a million boxes arrive at your doorstep in hopes that it’s before Christmas. The holidays have become just this big pile of consumer bullshit that society has fallen under, which makes the holidays more stressful than enjoyable most of the time.

What I’m learning as an adult that the holidays are a hard time financially and mentally, and gift-giving doesn’t equal “love” in any type of way. Once the anxiety of buying and wrapping gifts is over, that stress of Christmas is gone until the following year. I never hear any more just how thankful people just are to be able to see their family at the end of the year during the holidays. After losing someone in my family consecutively every year for the past three, I realize that it’s a blessing if you’re able to see your family make it through another whole year together. I realize that as long as you get to spend the holidays with your family, that’s just an accomplishment all on its own.

I know this may sound completely cheesy and overly dramatic, but you have to understand that some people’s stories aren’t like everyone else’s. Some people don’t get the pleasure of being with their families during the holidays. Some people don’t have families to see during the holidays. Some kids don’t get the pleasure of believing in a Santa Claus because there are no gifts under their trees on Christmas morning. Sometimes, these things really can happen to anyone. This time last year, I didn’t know something like this would happen to our family.

So yes, while the whole act of gift-giving and being happy to see your loved ones adore the gifts you got them, remember that that’s just a small portion of what the holidays represent. Remember that the holidays are for you and the people you love most in life, whether that be friends, family, partners, etc. The people in your life are some of the greatest gifts you’ll have in life. Trust me.

-Liz. (:

October 4th, 2018.

It’s way too hot for it to be considered Autumn. I flipped through all of the drawers of my dresser to find something to wear on this already frightening day. It was finally the day I got up in front of my grad students and spoke about my thesis and grad school experience for the majority of the class. No matter how many times I rehearsed it in my head, in the shower, in an empty room of my apartment; I was still fucking nervous. To say the least: I was an anxious mess in the hours prior. I worried if I was validated enough to even do something like this. Will they like me? Will they appreciate hearing my experience? Will they find me a nuisance? Something bad was bound to happen, I kept telling myself in my head, and I hope that it wasn’t true.

I arrived later to the campus than I actually wanted to; that’s how much of a mess I was for most of the day. By the time I got there, the class was about to start in 30 minutes, and I had just a little amount of time before it was finally time to get up there and share my experience, and how I got where I’m at. I smiled and said hi to all of my grad students when they walked into class, trying to distract myself from what was going to happen. My former thesis advisor walked up to me and greeted me, to in which I blabbered out how nervous I was. Of course, she reassured me, telling me I was going to be fine and that ultimately, this is about me and my process. After one class presentation later, it was now my time to do my thing.

Please let me get through this without any hiccups.

I placed my powerpoint slides on the projector and panicked a little when my former thesis advisor left the room to grab some water and start without her. Shit, I’m basically in control now. I looked out into the classroom of grad students looking up at the board, at me, wherever really. I didn’t know how to start this presentation without it being way too awkward, so I just opened it up with some background of where the hell these slides came from and how much of my thesis I’ll be reading from tonight. I even made a joke about how if I were to read my 40-page thesis, we’d be here until next Thursday. Some laughed. Some didn’t. I took a deep breath and began reading what I prepared.

I began the reading feeling okay about it; it was nothing to be worried about besides here and there where I got nervous and stuttered a bit. You got this, Liz. Fuck that speech impediment and do your thing, girl! I looked up here and there to see if the class was into what I was saying because I’m insecure like that, and noticed that there were these friends who were talking among each other, laughing. Immediately, I felt exposed. Not knowing if they were just having a conversation about whatever to themselves or laughing at me for stumbling over easy ass words here and there, I immediately felt myself disappear.

The words looked blurry on the paper. It felt like my heartbeat was in my ears. I couldn’t hear the words coming out of my mouth. My vision was impaired, my body felt sniff, I felt like I was floating, yet I had no control over what I was doing. My body was not mine at that moment, it just felt like a statue.

Liz, you’re dissociating. It’s fine, it’s cool, just fucking focus. Don’t let your anxiety win tonight. Prove yourself wrong.

I took a deep breath. I made it known that I was extremely nervous. For the most part, the class supported me. They said I was doing great. To keep going. So I did.

I don’t know when I began to focus, and I don’t know when I stopped caring if people were listening to me or not, but I remember looking calm. I remember feeling calm. I remember cursing like a sailor because I tend to curse my mind out when I’m nervous and passionate; good thing you can’t tell the difference in person, but most importantly, I remember reminding myself why I’m there in the first place. I wanted to help others out by sharing my story in a sense. I wanted to give others the guidance and advice I didn’t get when I was in their position. I wanted to reassure them that they will make it out with a damn degree like I did. I also wanted to conquer my own fears of public speaking and challenge my anxiety a bit. Standing up there every week for that class is a constant battle I am fighting against my anxiety.

I challenge my anxiety and sometimes anxiety fights back by having me dissociate from time to time.

Standing up there every week, I find myself dissociating. It may not be publicly noticeable (most dissociation isn’t), but I know when I am. I don’t hear the words come out of my mouth, I get sidetracked, I forget what I’m saying mid-sentence & have to pause to remember what the hell I’m talking about, but I eventually get over that feeling. I began to focus and observe the class. I take mental notes on how I’m doing and how the class is doing and I remember why I’m there.

**Dissociation is something you shouldn’t feel ashamed of if you experience it! Just because you dissociate doesn’t mean you now have DID, so please do not confuse the two! DID is a mental disorder, dissociation is a behavior/reaction due to a very nerve-wracking/anxious environment! Of course, not everyone experiences dissociation the same, so please acknowledge that the way I experience it will be/can be completely different than someone else!**

In other words: it happens, especially when you’re challenging yourself in the environments that trigger the most anxiety. The key to overcoming it, in my opinion, is to challenge it back. Don’t let it take over you and defeat your purpose of doing something. Don’t let it discourage you and hating an experience that didn’t actually go as bad as you think! In my experience leading a class that night, I received feedback I didn’t expect and it felt fucking amazing. 

In my self-discovery, I am learning to challenge these parts of myself in order to take back control of my body. Dissociation & anxiety do not own me. Neither should it own you.

-Liz. (:

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

Can you believe Christmas is nine days away? I mean, wasn’t it just Halloween, and now Christmas is around the corner? Before you know it, TNTH will be celebrating its 2nd year being a blog!

Whether you are a writer yourself, or just a person who likes to read other people’s work, I know how scary and hard it could be to start a new project. To be honest with you guys, TNTH was a blog that just… happened. It wasn’t this big planned thing that I was dying to do for years. TNTH honestly just happened one Friday night out of curiosity and here we are, almost two years later.

Other people who start huge create projects similar to a blog or a YouTube channel or whatever will probably tell you a better reason they started theirs; it’s a passion of theirs, they want to kickstart their business, they want to spread their word around the internet, etc. At first, I started TNTH for me. I had just wrapped up my first semester of grad school at the time, and I began to feel like I had no opportunity to write creatively anymore. In order to keep myself and my writing as creative as possible, I started TNTH. The name TNTH, (or Today’s News, Tomorrow’s Headline), came about because it was the name of my Tumblr blog back when Tumblr was at its highest peak. I wanted to use Tumblr as a real blog, but quickly fell into the hole of just reblogging images from other people. So, in creating TNTH on WordPress, I wanted to share all of these things that I never did before: I wanted to give people tips on how I survived college and grad school. I wanted to talk about the type of music that other people might enjoy listening to. I wanted a platform to express my thoughts on issues without writing a novel-length status on Facebook. As I started to see what type of content I enjoyed writing, I started to realize what my purpose of TNTH really was.

I wanted to be the voice for people who were too afraid to use theirs.

As a person who was once afraid to speak up and express myself, I know how beneficial it is to read and see how other people like me got to where they are. I followed many introverts on their journeys to success and wondered just how they got to the place they are in now. It’s inspirational, it’s motivational, and it feels good to know that there are people out there just like me who are able to make their dreams come true, or just live healthier lives. It’s extremely difficult to break out of patterns you are so used to; you even start to feel if not speaking out is just a part of your personality. But, everyone deserves to be heard. Everyone deserves a chance to express who they are as people and the things that make up their being. It’s so interesting to hear other people’s and their stories; everyone has one to tell. So, I made it my mission to use TNTH as a place to place help people realize that their voices matter and that it’s their strongest and loudest instrument. It definitely became an even stronger mission when I began to struggle with my mental health late last year/this year.

So, I wish my origin story was an interesting one. I wish it was something as storytelling as some famous YouTubers in why they started their channels all those years ago. But, my story and my mission was always simple: I just want to keep my voice going, while showing people that you could have your voice heard.

So, here’s to almost two years of TNTH! Thank you guys so much for being a part of my journey, and for continuing to come back and support TNTH. If you are thinking about starting a new big project, I say go for it. Now is the right time to do something that you’re passionate about. Do it because you can at least say that you tried it out. Do it because you want to!

Just friggin’ do it already. You never know what could happen.

-Liz. (: