Hey guys, welcome back to TNTH!

Before we begin, can we just say how clickbait-y this title sounds? Trust me, I’m not trying to have you guys click this post and feel sorry for me, I just feel like this is something that most overachievers in their 20’s feel because of just how the world is nowadays.

I feel like there are two different types of 20-somethings in the world:

• The first type is those who use their 20’s to live life and explore the world. They go out on the weekends and party, they aren’t tied down to anyone because they enjoy being single, they are simply living for themselves and they are having fun along the way because they know this is the only time in their lives where living this way is acceptable and expected.
• The other type is those who grow up entirely too fast. They are thinking about 30 years ahead of their time, they want to begin having children, they get engaged and then married within years of each other, they fucking have life insurance despite how healthy they are, and they truly think that they are full-blown adults that should be acting like one.

I feel like I’m a combination of both. I feel like I want to be both types of 20-somethings because honestly, those who are the first type are people who probably were sheltered as teenagers and those who are the second type were probably teenagers who did all the partying and drinking already. I was definitely a late-bloomer, so I feel myself wanting to embrace my 20’s as a YOUNG adult (because that’s what I am) and have fun while I have these years. Yet, I also feel myself wanting to have that “picture-perfect” stable life where I have expectations of what my 20’s should be like. I told myself that by the time I am 26, I want to be engaged. People think I’m crazy, but I personally feel like 26 is a good age to finally start to wind down and make life decisions. This doesn’t mean I’m going to force myself to find a man to marry me at 26, it just means that I’m ready to settle down romantically. I don’t necessarily surround myself with people who are married (I mean, married 20-somethings in NYC don’t exist unless you were in the military or something because those are the only people in the world at my age getting married, again – no shade), but I do know people personally and socially that are in serious relationships, who live with their partners, who have little families already. Granted, I don’t want to have children (I mean, not yet), but I do want to be on the track of getting that “picture-perfect” life. I want to experience that and much more: a stable career, a stable lifestyle, a stable household; pretty much a stable life that many of us call ‘goals’ on social media.

Which brings me to my next point: we all want this type of lifestyle because 9 out of the 10 times we see it portrayed on social media. We see old schoolmates having kids, landing dream jobs, getting engaged, living in their own apartments, and we think that just because someone else in their 20-somethings is living life like that, you believe that the way you’re living your life is the wrong way. Everyone who feels this way knows it’s nonsensical and not true, yet we still feel like we aren’t living our best lives.

I know I am not wasting my life away. I know that I am on my own individual path of happiness and success and whether or not I get that “picture-perfect” life I envisioned myself having, I am going to have a good life regardless. It still doesn’t mean that I don’t feel these things. It’s merely the fact that when I see someone else living the life I thought I was going to have at my age, I get really discouraged. Just recently, a former schoolmate and her high-school sweetheart got engaged. I was happy for them because they’ve been with each other since high-school, but it did make me stare intently at my high-school sweetheart/now partner like “… when is that gonna be us, my dude?” 

But I digress.

I know that everything that I’m doing with my life at this very moment is helping me grow and move forward with it. I know getting through grad school and getting my master’s degree is going to pay off once it’s actually all done and over with. I know that the rocky parts of my life currently are going to help me make better decisions in the future. I know that everything happens for a reason, whether you like it or not.

As for now, live in the present.

Enjoy your 20’s for what they were meant to be. Find yourself, discover your passions, gain some life experience, be reckless, fearless, wild. Do everything you want to do before it’s too late. Be with yourself before you allow a significant other in your world, shit– before you allow a baby to come into your world. Life is different for everyone and just because you’re not where some other people are, doesn’t mean you can’t be happy and celebrate you and where YOU are.

Be 20-something, not 40-something.

-Liz. (:

Hey guys, welcome back to TNTH!

If I had a frequently asked questions section of my blog, I bet you one of the questions I would have to answer is the one I’ve been getting from people for the last couple of years:

Liz, why don’t you write poems anymore?

As I’m slowly trying to get myself back in writing creatively again, I remember the times that I sat for hours writing poetry in my notebook. There was a point in time that I wrote a new poem every other day, possibly writing and posting one on Facebook every week. I used to attend poetry workshops as a teenager and for a while, I began to see my poems becoming better, cleaner, and wittier. For a while, I was “Liz, the poet” more than “Liz, the writer” and I was fine with that. Poetry is what ultimately made me start writing and to start taking writing seriously.

Then, I stopped.

I stopped writing poetry at the end of 2013 mainly because I found myself being a much happier person. My poetry was at its greatest in 2012; the time when I was battling with depression and issues within myself. Yet, my poetry in that era was some of the cleanest, wittiest, and most put together pieces I ever wrote. I find myself reading back at those poems from time-to-time and I have to ask myself, where did all of this come from? I mean, surely my inspiration came from my depression and my issues, but the passion and the hurt behind it; how did I convey that through poetry?

But, I didn’t stop for only that reason. I stopped because I was a wuss. I had a friend at the time that would criticize my writing and my ability to write good poetry every single time I would share one. It was always something negative like “this was absolute trash” or “do better next time”. As a depressed 18-year-old girl, that was discouraging and slowly but surely I just stopped sharing altogether.

I didn’t realize this was my issue until I took a poetry class during my last year of undergrad. I had to be conferenced by my professor and I had to show her my portfolio of poems I’ve written in the last semester. She wasn’t the nicest professor at my college, but she knew what she was talking about, and I appreciated her critique because of that. She told me that I had a gift for contemporary poetry. She told me that I have such an urban lyric style to my poems that she never really saw in her students. She also said that I could do better. My poems were creative and they told stories, but I wasn’t confident enough to let my words speak for themselves. She then asked me if I had any background in writing poetry and I told her, but I also told her that I’ve gotten driven away from poetry by my peers. I told them that they made me feel like my poetry was amateur and not meant to be taken seriously; like my voice shouldn’t be taken seriously. I mean, my professor ultimately told me to tell them to go fuck themselves, but it was already too late: by that time, I lost my passion and my drive for poetry. I wasn’t in such a bad place anymore, and I overthink my poems because I get so nervous that they aren’t good enough.

Two years after that talk, I find myself wishing that I kept that side of my creative writing closer to me. I wish I was able to just ignore those around me and continued to write poetry to help heal me. Sitting down and writing one is easier said than done, and every time I do so, I end up scrapping it. I don’t know if there will be a time when I am able to just write a poem, but I really do miss it.

It really was a love-hate relationship when it came to poetry. Writing poetry made me have to get in touch with my feelings and how I felt about certain things. There would be times I would write a really dark piece, and even after I was done with it, the ambiance would still be around me. But, some of the greatest poems come from a place of hurt, and I wrote some of my best during this dark time in my life.

Maybe poetry was just a part of my past self, maybe I just let people’s comments win.

At the end of the day, I will always be a writer, no matter how many people want to tell me otherwise. My writing always speaks for itself, whether in stanzas or not.

-Liz. (:

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

When I was younger, I used to say that my favorite holiday was Christmas because of the presents, I mean what child doesn’t? Now that I’m older and “an adult” (let’s face it, I’m nowhere being one), I still say that Christmas is my favorite holiday, but definitely for different reasons. Christmas is my favorite holiday because I get to do all of the traditional stuff that either my family or I do! I’ve definitely created some of my own personal holiday traditions over the years, so here are some of the things I do every year during the holiday season:

• If I can, I put up all the Christmas house decorations and the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving or the weekend after. This year, I’ve managed to decorate my apartment with Christmas stuff, now I’m just waiting to have some time to put the actual tree up. (Edit: she’s up!)
•  For as long as I could remember, my extended family would come together for Christmas and exchange gifts either before or after Christmas (one year, we exchanged Christmas gifts January 31st… yeah). When I was younger, though, we used to do it before Christmas and whenever my grandparents came into town, they would drop off me and my sister’s gifts at my house, and then take us to my aunt’s house to open the other gifts. I used to hate it when my grandmother would tell my mom that we weren’t allowed to open them before Christmas, and my sister and I knew that my grandparents spoiled us rotten. We got amazing gifts as children. We still do get amazing gifts, but we get to open them the day we see them nowadays.
• My family and I open Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve. There’s no special reason why; we were literally impatient as kids and now we’re impatient grown adults. Personally, I never liked opening gifts on Christmas morning. I feel like presents should be open at nighttime after dinner; who wants to be groggy and tired opening gifts the morning after?
• Speaking of Christmas Eve, I’ve spent every Christmas Eve with Obie for the last six years. At first, it was just coincidental that we would hang out on Christmas Eve, but after the 3rd year of doing so, I made it my mission to always see him that day: 1.) to keep the tradition going and 2.) to give him his Christmas present. Let’s hope we do it again this year!
• When my sister and I were kids, my parents made Santa’s arrival really dramatic. One year, the whole fire-escape window was wide open and things were knocked down; another year a big ass garbage bag of gifts were left on our front porch as if Santa was the fucking UPS Delivery man, it was fun and honestly, I didn’t stop believing in Santa until… I was legit 10 years old.
•  I guess I picked this up from my mother, but every Christmas I send out a couple of Christmas cards to some friends. I send cards to those people who I don’t really get to see anymore or anyone who lives far away now, but I always do it for the holiday spirit. I feel like people don’t send out cards anymore unless you’re that suburban family who lives in a wealthy neighborhood and buys every family member a different Hallmark card because they just got it like that. I felt like I just shook a whole community of people. I feel like some of my friends only get cards from me, and I really like to bring that aspect back into people’s lives again.

And that’s all of them! What are your Holiday Traditions?

-Liz. (:

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

I am happy to announce that for the next twelve days leading up to Christmas, I will be publishing a new post EVERY DAY until then! I wanted to do something special on the blog for the holidays (kind of like how YouTubers do “Vlogmas” every day), so I thought of creating my own little daily thing! I mean, it’s probably been done a million times already but what the hell!

The first official post will be TOMORROW, December 14th at 12 noon! I’ll see you guys until then!

-Liz. (: