Category: Voiceless Rant: The Series

Another year, another post to just throw out some random thoughts on a screen and label it as a rant. Yes, if you haven’t guessed it already by the title, this is the 2025 edition of:

I feel like the older I get, the less inclined I am to actually express myself (personally) in my blog writing. Sure, we have Overexposed as a series, but I find myself very much enjoying having the ability to share what I want to share versus what I don’t. This doesn’t mean I’m not a writer anymore, it just means that my inspiration and my focus is more on the stories I write, telling the stories of the different characters that live in my brain for most of the day.

The most I’ve shared about myself was my OCD diagnosis, which is something that I chose to share for the sake of being transparent and authentic with myself. Like I previously spoke about, it’s been a challenge understanding how this diagnosis looks like on me, and in the process of learning and being more aware of my rituals, compulsions, and rumination, it’s very apparent that all of those are mental for me. I learned a lot about myself in this journey, not even realizing that the inner voice in my head that never shuts up is a OCD symptom. Needless to say, this is something that I am still learning about, all while “unlearning” the techniques and mechanisms, disguised as OCD.

I was worried that this new diagnosis would mentally put me in the place I was in when I first started therapy, and using my anxiety diagnosis as the bible to explain why I was the way I was. It hindered my progress, and it really wasn’t until a couple of years later that I figured out how anxiety looked on me. In an ironic way, it’s my OCD fearing that because of this new diagnosis, I will treat it as a crutch as I did with previous diagnosis’. I know it’s a ridiculous thought, but it feels real, and OCD strives on thoughts that feel real. I am (still) learning that every thought is just a thought, whether or not it’s fake or real. I am (also still) learning that not everything I struggle with is stemmed with OCD, and that things that are currently happening and real need to be processed correctly. In a nutshell, my belief that emotional processing will cause me to spiral out of control was an OCD thought that developed through a traumatic experience.

One of my compulsions is hair pulling. Not only does it stress me out that I do it and know that it’s a body repetitive focused behavior, but I have trained my brain that pulling my hair allows my mind to escape the real situations and real emotions I am currently going through. For me, it’s dealing with the “mental changes” from young adulthood to adulthood, battling with themes and feelings that are very new in this body.

As I write this, I am trying to be more discipline with myself. Knowing myself, I am trying to quit cold turkey with hair pulling. I’ve tried looking at it in a different perspective, replacing the behavior with something similar; everything. After many discussions with different professionals about my hair pulling, I am at the stage where I’ve gained awareness of the behavior, but have not strictly stopped myself from doing the behavior. While it’s not ideal to quit turkey since this is a behavior, not a habit, I am trying to control the situation by visibly seeing this huge STOP sign in my mind when I find myself wanting to pull, or mindlessly pull. So far, it’s been going well with some moments of me looking at my hair and pulling and going, “oh shit, you’re doing it again.”

I have tons of goals for myself entering 2026 related to this. So far, I have not cut my hair short out of impulse, and I’ve been letting my eyebrows grow (again) after they burned off with bleach.

“Oh, what makes this attempt to grow out your hair and eyebrows any different than the last couple of times?” I wasn’t aware that even this thought was OCD driven.

What makes this time different is now I have the resources needed to at least try something different. I am able to take note of the places and time of day when I am prone to pulling my hair. I am able to take a step back and think what truly is the underlying issue causing these urges to pull.

Of course, there’s always a chance I will need to revise my plan, and be okay knowing the fact that it may not work. There’s always a chance I will pull and not know how to get myself out of it. There’s always a chance that the guilt and shame of relapsing will drive my need to continue to pull. There’s always a chance that this time may be like the other times in the past. But, at least I can say that I tried, and am actively trying to break the cycle.

Another year, another yearly update of one of the first “overexposed”-esque like series, The Voiceless Rant.

I think I say this every year, but I can’t believe just how far we’ve come from feeling like my thoughts and feelings were just “voiceless rants” whenever I would speak. I guess they turned into “overexposed” posts once I realized that I needed to believe what I was writing (and saying) before anyone else was going to believe it.

Anyway, let’s get right into it.

It’s truly crazy to think that this time 10 years ago, I was a junior in college wrapping up my fall semester writing a script of a short film for my final project in my screenwriting class. It came to me as if it was second nature, especially these were characters I’ve played around with for many years before. Although it has been more recent since I started writing my stories into series here on the blog, I always found people listening to me whenever I told my stories. I have a distinct memory being in the 8th grade, talking to my best friend on AIM about a story of a group of teens that were friends, kinda like the one we were both a part of at the time. I wish I saved those conversations just to reread the stories I told of my characters; God knows how cringey they would seem to me now.

But creative writing has always been my “star of the show”, meaning I was never great with my own words but when it was telling fictional stories and writing poetry, everyone would listen. Does that naturally come to writers? Sometimes I really do sit back and ask myself, “when did I decide that being a writer was now a part of my identity?”

Maybe it was when I was in the 5th grade, doodling in different notebooks of the characters that lived in my imagination, telling their stories through drawings and storyboards and actually acting them out as I went along. Maybe it was int the 6th grade, writing a poem in the schoolyard during lunch about a boy I had a crush on and read it to a group of girls who were also into writing poems. Maybe it was in the 8th grade, reciting a poem I created for our Ballroom dancing event that everyone applaud for and told me how good the poem was to them. Maybe it was during my sophomore year in college when I wrote a piece about the most traumatic event in my life up to that point, shared it, and received the validation I yearned for when trying to tell my side of the story.

Maybe it was my first year in grad school, contemplating whether or not I should start a blog to post my writings on.

I don’t remember exactly when my identity as a writer truly started, but it has been such a long and tiresome journey to be where I’m at with it. I grew up thinking that if I didn’t write for a living and make money off from it, then I wasn’t a real writer or storyteller. I grew up and surrounded myself with other writers and always felt like their stories were just better told than mine, which meant that no one really wanted to listen to what I wrote, even if those writings were a sequence of poems of me contemplating suicide for months on end when I was 18. I grew up with people telling me I wasn’t qualified to be a writer because I was horrible at it. That mindset made me almost fail my first semester English course because I lost my passion for it briefly during this time.

But that’s just a lot of the obstacles needed to be where I’m at and feel okay about it as well. Fr starters, I’m not an upcoming author with books waiting to be published and a saga waiting to be made into feature-length movies. I’m not even in the world of writing as a career! I’ve come to terms that writing is more of an outlet for me. It’s become a space where I can speak out and talk about things I would normally keep to myself at my 9 to 5. It’s become my space; one that I am solely in by myself but have ceiling to floor glass windows looking into it. I love sharing my writing and I love being able to tell the stories of these characters in a more expressive and organized way. Before 2020, they lived in my head for decades!

Being a writer to me just means that I value the words I write more than I can speak them. I am able to filter out the filler of a sentence and think about what is it that I’m truly trying to say without feeling vulnerable and put on the spot. I am able to edit and revise and make the words sound better by focusing where in the story the most emphasis should be on, and I am able to get out of my own head for a couple of minutes and become Grace or Jamie, Milo, Sophie, or Mollie, Micah or Rosie, Milo or Jennifer, or everyone else in between in my writing. After all this time with these characters and these stories and being a writer for over a decade, I am still so in love with it.

And I guess that’s what being a writer means to me. I write because it’s truly my best voice. I write because its stayed my passion for so many years and I still get so excited to sit down and write. As for LFL posts, I’m excited to see where the future of these stories being told. As you may know, The Something Series is coming down to its last couple of posts before the series finale early next year. This was a series I started all the way back in 2020, so when it finally comes to an end, I am going to be devastated to leave that particular universe. But, I am ready to say goodbye to these two and allow their story be told outside of the series. I’m excited to devote more energy to the other series going strong on the blog, preferably y2katalogue: the tapes. There’s so much left in store with all of these characters and their stories, so please stay tuned to them and I really hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

I love being a writer. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world; honestly.

You know it’s December when you’re at your office job, bored out of your office mind, writing blog posts for the Twelve Letters of Lizmas.

It’s funny, I feel as if many people (besides those in retail; y’all are going through it right now but those paychecks probably are looking really nice) can agree on this: the holiday season is when most people take their annual leave for the holidays, the college semesters are coming to an end and public schools are getting ready for Christmas break. It’s just a very slow time for all of us here at The Registrar’s Office, so I figured why not kill some time by writing another installment of:

These posts only come once a year, like the holiday season.

I feel like as a society, our minds are constantly on getting through the holidays as smooth and cost-friendly as possible. As I get older, I realize more and more that the smartest way to get through the holiday season is to start your shopping early! Of course, it’s not always easy to put life on pause to get your Christmas shopping together, but as someone who gets paid bi-weekly, it requires a lot of planning on how to spend your money to make it to the next paycheck. For me, I finished my shopping after I decided that I was going to California for my 30th birthday this January. That’s truly been the ultimate task: getting the holiday stuff done while saving for a trip.

I’ve only ever been on a plane once in my life, and that was back in early 2020 to Florida. The only difference was that I went and stayed with a college friend, and it was a solo trip. So while it was my first trip outside of the tri-state area, I didn’t experience the full “travel trip” experience. This time around, I am traveling with another person and staying at a hotel! The actual preparation for this trip feels much different this time around; a big reason being that we’re doing all of this during the holiday season. Like, people actually do this? Book trips and travel during the holiday season? And have to buy gifts and all of that? I’m lucky that I’m just trying to save up for the gist of having to do things for the holiday season.

I feel like this post is going absolutely nowhere, but I feel like I say the same exact thing every time I write one of these rants.

…

Anyway, I’m excited for everything that’s yet to come this next year! In 2024, I will be turning 30, which is a pretty big deal for me. I feel like 29 has prepared me for what is yet to come in the next decade of my life. I don’t know how to explain it, but my 29th year has felt like a more life-altering experience than my previous years. I feel like at 29, I had to unlearn things that I’ve known for most of my life, and I really had to start doing things differently in different aspects of my life.

They say that 29 is your Saturn return, which in a nutshell means it’s a time in your life when you are faced with major challenges that ultimately transform you as a person. To some extent, I believe it.

I believe that the challenges and obstacles I faced earlier this year have helped me learn new ways to handle and practice conflict resolution in ways I normally wouldn’t have done in the past. In a professional setting, I’ve learned that the most efficient way to resolve a conflict is to always follow policy and stick to the facts… it’s only when things get nasty that you move it to a supervisor. Within my new position at the office, I am learning ways to handle conflict in the areas that I manage without the assistance of my boss; it’s just one of those things I want to master not as just a person in this position, but as someone who’s fight or flight response is forever triggered due to social anxiety. In a personal/social setting, I am learning that conflicts are conversations that need to be had, whether or not they are easy ones to have. Avoiding conflict will not make you a happier person, trust me; I’ve done it for years. Speaking up for yourself and knowing that there is potential for it to turn into a conflict or argument is just the process of it all. I’ve learned that when you do that and there’s conflict involved, sometimes you inevitably have to do what’s best for you if boundaries are not being respected and/or crossed.

That’s another thing, never bend your own boundaries. Even more so, you as a person shouldn’t cross your own boundaries! If you tell yourself that one of your boundaries is to give yourself space for some self-care, don’t go and make yourself available when you know you should be taking those self-care hours. If your cup is not filled enough to fill other people’s cups, then don’t try to fill up theirs first. It’s these tiny details in life that really help me learn what healthy boundaries look and feel like. This is always a work in progress, but I’ve definitely have gotten to a place where the outcome has been more positive the more I practice setting boundaries.

There’s still a lot I need to work on, and I think next year will be the year where I actually discipline myself to do things better and think more strategically as an adult needing to make more adult-like decisions. With that being said, I think this year has helped me grow much more than I thought I was going to, and I’m excited to explore life with this new outlook on life.

Okay, it’s nearing 4:30pm; time to get ready to clock out for the day!

Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz. God, I miss these types of posts.

When I started the blog, I created a monthly series where I just sit down and free-write anything that comes to mind in hopes it makes some type of sense at the end. I used it to do some self-reflection during a time in my life when I didn’t have the mental space to take a step back and see if I was doing okay. Those grad school years were no joke, y’all.

In the end, the series that came about this was called:

I remember this series mainly being about my mental health and how I knew I wasn’t in the right place, but I always hoped that maybe with time, things would fall into those right places. Newsflash: they didn’t, even after seeking therapy in mid-2018. I honestly don’t know what changed these types of posts; maybe was just more in love being in my writing universes than actually sitting here and writing about things that are just bland and mediocre. Maybe my life has just gotten that boring, but I’m more passionate about exploring fictional characters and their lives than my own but in a good way! I feel like as the years passed and I started to deal with my mental health in a different way, I felt like my mind is now occupied with storytelling and the characters that live in these universes I’ve created.

I love thinking about 30-year-old Grace that is still trying to figure out her life at her age and what it means to be just herself. She’s at a point in her life where she doesn’t want to be identified as something she doesn’t feel confident or comfortable in while also trying to let go of the identity she had when she was with Jamie. She thinks that her choices are what fucks everything in her life up, but little does she know it’s those choices that put her exactly where the universe wants her to be.

I love thinking about 20-year-old Micah that is eccentric and outspoken and going through the waves of college life while still trying to see where his place in society is. He’s the one in his family trying to chase after his dreams, but it’s also his family that holds him back from doing what is needed to achieve those dreams. Also, he’s trying to figure out how to live a life without his real best friend, Rosie, after the traumatic sequence of events for both of them.

I love thinking about the 14-year-old entourage Milo & Mollie, two best friends that are total opposites yet come together because they are the best friend duo. Milo is the shy and hyperfocused friend while Mollie is the spontaneous and headstrong friend, sometimes their personalities clash in a way that puts the both of them in tough situations. To see the different directions that these two friends are going in their stories is exciting to play around with, especially because they both have something that the other lacks, which makes the outcome of their storylines so interesting to portray.

I love thinking about the sub-characters of these stories and thinking of potential spin-pff series with them as the main characters. I swear sometimes my brain works like a Nickelodeon or Disney mashup; all these different characters from different stories do live in the same, wider universe and are even related. Milo and Micah are brothers; Mollie is Grace’s mother. Again, it’s interesting to see these characters and their personalities and see just how much their traits and flaws affect those that are around them. For example; Mollie as a teenager speaks a lot about how Mollie is as a young adult. We also see that in Grace as a young adult even following in her own mother’s footsteps–

Wait, when did this become a post about me gushing over these characters?

Needless to say, this is a part of my identity that I felt was neglected in the years that I was trying to get my mental health in order. I felt like I never had the space to think in depth about these characters that I developed in my imagination for quite some time now. Mollie and Milo were created when I was 14 years old back in 2008. Micah was created in 2017, and Grace was created in 2014 when I took screenwriting in college. All these years that these characters have literally lived in my mind rent-free but it wasn’t until 2020 that I actually began to tell their stories and actually followed through with them.

And that’s when these types of posts began to slow down, and in a way, I’m glad that I made the transition from this type of content to just storytelling. Sometimes I do ask myself, “should I rename the blog because I’m not really writing in the format that I used to write in?” But at the end of the day, my blog is just a space where these characters can live outside of my mind, and I’m so glad that many of you follow my blog for these characters because like, I never thought that anyone would get invested in a bunch of characters that I made up one random day of the year.

This content– the storytelling content– is the most “me” I’ve been in a while on this blog, and maybe that’s why I take posting and writing and staying on a schedule so seriously because like… I actually enjoy writing on here now. I think there will always be a special place in my heart for my old content, this type of content because it’s literally the foundation of what this blog is. But just like me, my blog grew up, and this is the best version of “Liz, the writer” I’ve been in my opinion.

… And that’s the end of this voiceless rant.

Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz!

It’s been so long since one of these bad boys were posted on the blog! This series, in particular, was created during a time in my life where I felt voiceless in a world where there were louder voices. I started this series as an attempt to be completely uncensored about how I was feeling and to show readers that I was more than what meets the eye. After 4 years of this series being on and off, it’s kind of funny to see how much I’ve grown away from this series, and how much I actually found my voice throughout the series, and just in life in general.

In other words, here’s this month’s installment of:

This year alone has been one that I truly think I needed in order to get better. I needed to get to a place of rock bottom and uncertainty to lift myself back up and get better clarity of the things that mean a lot to me and what was important to me. It’s crazy, almost being 28 years old and feeling nothing like my 23 or 24 year old self. You truly grow within your years, and I’m so grateful they were for the better.

Because I entered my 20’s still not having my own identity. I went through them still feeling scared, naive, and voiceless when all I wanted to do was to voice what I wanted to voice out. It’s mainly one of the reasons I took up writing; I wanted nothing more to express myself without having anything interrupt it or anything taking my time and space to talk away from me. And these “rants” allowed me to do just that; to have a moment to talk about things that were bothering me and things that I wanted to express my opinions about. It was also the first time I expressed my concern of seeking professional help for my mental health and the stigma it would put on me: the one that was always “kept together” and “strong”. This series brought out some of the most uncomfortable topics in me.

2021 challenged me to project my voice; verbally, and in my writing.

Writing wise, I had to stick up for my narrative within my journal article to peer reviewers who didn’t appreciate my voice being so heavy in an academic piece. I had to defend my voice and the importance of my voice in my papers because too many people lose it in the process.

Verbally, I had to challenge those who took my kindness for weakness and I needed to learn boundaries. While I wanted to voice those boundaries, I was too scared to do so. But, I realized that when you secretly need those things and when your soul tells you that you need something in your life to change, you gotta listen to it. Again, it wasn’t an easy road to get where I’m at, and it took years to finally perfect it in a way that works for me.

When I think back to younger Liz, the early 20’s Liz (and even late teens Liz) I can’t help but be extremely grateful that I made it to be the age I am today. Who would’ve thought that I would be here today and look back and say, “goddamn, you are now living in the mind that you always wanted.” And when I’m in my 30’s, I’ll probably say the same thing again! But to be here and allowed myself the room to grow and better myself instead of ending my life when I was 18, I think I’ll forever be grateful and thankful that there was something in me wanting to push harder and see the good out of things, and in myself.

And I think for the most part, this series played its role and did what it needed to do for me. I think it gave me the space and time needed to express and project my voice when I couldn’t do it in real life. And because of that, this series will always remind me where I once was, and how far I’ve come since then.

See you when I see you next, Voiceless rants.

Dear, guys – welcome back to Letter From Liz!

It’s kind of crazy that it’s been a hot minute since we had a post like this on the blog! In all honesty, I just haven’t felt inspired to write about myself (if you’re an active reader, you would know that a lot of my posts have been scenes of my writing universe). But for the sake of wrapping up this year and keeping the Lizmas tradition, here is this month’s (and the last for 2020) installment of:

So, despite my life taking a complete 180 from what it is now, I’ve been doing some new things that never in a million years I thought I’d do.

Hi, my name is Liz and I’m on a dating app.

For those who know me, you know that within the last decade, I was in a relationship and towards the end of 2019, we both went our separate ways. I told myself I needed some time to get to know myself and to embrace my own interests and prioritize my feelings and just spend some time by myself.

That was a year and a half ago, I’m somewhat tired of being my own company.

I’ve been having this mindset of wanting to date again for awhile. I remember being at the bar with a couple of my co-workers (before the pandemic) expressing the fact that I think I was ready to start dating again. I felt confident in my skin and in my personality and I felt like I was finally ready to put myself out there. Of course, The pandemic happened and my priorities definitely shifted since that night at the bar, but I did start putting myself out there.

This past summer, I’ve met some amazing people who are now call my friends, and I can’t lie, just having the courage to put myself out there and make connections through a Kpop trading community made me realize the fact that networking and just not being afraid of putting yourself out there is always a good thing in life, especially in this day and age.

It took me months to realize that I should just download a damn dating app and from my best friend’s recommendations, I’m here on a dating app, hoping to meet some new people!

It’s weird because I never saw myself ever being okay talking to complete strangers I match with online but it’s a lot easier than I thought! Perhaps it’s because for the entire summer, I had to make the first move whenever I wanted to trade or buy photocards from people within the community.

As I’m writing this now, I haven’t had amny success on the dating app just yet, but that’s completely fine! I’m not in any rush to find someone and start a whole big thing with them; I’m just happy I was able to make this whole step in the first place and I guess we will see what comes from it!

I’m extremely shocked that there were people who swiped right on me. Like… what was it about my profile that made them swipe right; I may never know. But it does give you that little confidence boost that someone is willing to match with you and start up just a simple conversation. It’s definitely been nice seeing the type of people I’m matching with and the people I’m even swiping right on!

It’s so weird being 26 year old and finally being out on the dating scene like this. I never casually dated like this before and it’s definitely something I’m not going to master right away but I’m still so fucking young and what better time to explore and put myself out there than now? That’s the mentality I have on this new dating thingymabob journey.

So, hi! If you somewhat found my blog and we’ve matched… hi. :3