Hello friends,
My name is Lize. Kind of. (It’s Lize in 2 of the 3 countries I’ve lived in, but I’ve only lived in those countries for 2 years out of my almost 24—does that make me 1/12th Lize?) My Lizeness is hard to quantify and this might be where you stop me and go “Lize, please” with an eye roll and then I will have succeeded in naming my substack. Basically, thanks to the weirdness of the English short i sound, Lize is my travel name and alter ego and she’s who I am coming to you through. We are all travelers here together, are we not? Maybe Substack exists on the same transitory plane as airports (pun intended).
In early 2021, I made a WordPress account, chose a handle using a Wu Tang Clan name generator, posted one post, and then never returned to it. That account and that post have long since been swallowed by the hungry swirling maw of cyberspace, and I’ve erected a statue for them in the vast graveyard of things I did not follow through on. But I’m back. This is round 2 and I actually have some things to say this time.
Some details about me if you are interested (trigger warning, list incoming):
I’ve written my whole life but I am notoriously bad at finishing things. When I was eight, my parents took our family on a trip to Rome and gave us journals to commemorate it. In mine, I wrote one exquisitely detailed entry about the Detroit airport and literally nothing else. Sadly, this is not so far removed from my adult habits, BUT this is my attempt to overcome!
Related to number one, because of this I have never felt like I could fully claim the title of writer (although I was awarded “Best Writer” for my high school senior year superlative, which is a fact I’m stupidly fond of even if it was also paired with the shady “Most Likely to Go to College for the Social Scene”). I also didn’t study anything English/writing related in my undergrad, and I regularly have to talk myself out of feeling regret for that.
My hair is dyed firetruck red and I feel very attached to it.
I had an extra wisdom tooth, and while it’s probably good that they succeeded in removing all 5, sometimes I feel myself running my tongue over a hole in my mind distinctly lacking some enameled knowledge.
I currently teach English at an all boys middle school in rural South Korea and I (and some choice masterpieces currently displayed on my classroom tables) can confidently say middle school boyhood transcends language and sovereign borders. I highly recommend this experience because it’s very comforting to bare witness to the fact that—despite the fucked up-ness of the world we live in—middle schoolers are still middle schoolers… also they’ve made me extremely aware of Charlie Puth for some reason.
As a kid, my drug of choice was YA fantasy romance series, but I hit 8th grade and suddenly decided I needed to read books like Crime and Punishment. It’s only this year that I’ve broken out of that mindset thanks to the power of nostalgia and living in a town whose library's English section only has Harry Potter.
I made an above average amount of mistakes as a teen and I’m still coming to terms with them. I’m beginning to fear it’s one of those lifelong processes.
Music is the thing I care most about in the world, but I’m decidedly a music enjoyer, not a music creator, because I am entirely devoid of rhythm. This is probably a good thing because if I had it, I would definitely be like one of those kids who played the drums with their pen on the desk except as an adult and at all times. Also, I am unfortunately annoying to listen to music with for most people because I have a bad habit of shushing the room when a good part is coming. I’m working on it.
I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school, and even though I don’t practice anymore, it’s deeply ingrained in the way I think and write. Someone told me this once, and I resisted it for a while, but recently I’ve been realizing I literally love the Bible, just specifically in the same way one would love the Odyssey.
One of the annoying truths I have come to learn is that you really do get better at everything with practice (even ineffable things like art or being a good person or how to have a sense of direction), and sometimes you have to suffer through being bad at things you Care about in order to get better. This account is an exercise in that.
Lots of “I” in this post, I’m sorry. Thank you for reading :) I will talk to you soon.
Love Lize