👋 How to live a chapter of your life

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A few weeks ago, a friend was in town and asked to grab dinner in the old Manhattan neighborhood I lived in for five years.
Yes, please, I responded.

I was excited to see her and I was excited to go back to a place where I lived such a dense part of my life. A place I've avoided going back to since I left it in 2017.

As I got off the subway stop, I looked around at the streets above ground and thought:

Life has gone on here without me. The people look young, like I did back then. The stores have changed over. There’s now a Sweetgreen, even a Target. My old apartment, likely, has had multiple different people living in there since I left. There’s no trace I was ever there. Yet, if anyone cared to listen, I've got stories about each of these blocks. I have memories in these restaurants. I have secrets that come on out and tap me on the shoulder — if I look a certain way.

We live our life in chapters.

High school was a chapter and so was going off to college. Moving to LA and working for a sorority at 21 is another. Moving back home and working for the Cruella de Vil of magazines is one I love to talk about. And then there's chapter, hmm I don't know, 13, where I move to New York City, into an apartment with a complete stranger I met once over Skype. That chapter lasted 5 years, but it's the longest one of them all. It's thousands of pages most of which I've tried to forget about.

It can be dangerous to relive a chapter you’re still in the process of processing.

So i’ve avoided going back, until now.

👋 Welcome to the Monday Pick-Me-Up. Some chapters of your life you will never get to relive. Maybe because the place or the person isn’t here anymore. It's not like I can go back to the 9th grade and sit at the lunch table beside Rachel and Iris and gossip about boys. My friend Jamie texted me this week about a memory from the first grade. I can't go back and relive that again with her. But some chapters we can, and we're lucky we're able to. Here's why.

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👋 How to Live Chapters of Your Life

Before meeting my friend for dinner, I lingered outside my old apartment building and people watched.

Everyone who passed was living in the wrong decade.

Or maybe it was just me. Maybe I was the only one going back in time.

They were 21-29, coming home from work, stopping at the wine store, going to the gym. I didn't see any wedding rings. No babies. Hardly anyone holding hands.

The neighborhood is how I remembered it. A home for those in their twenties who are chasing one thing: What's next for them.

Promotions. Engagements. Bigger apartments downtown.

I never wanted that stuff. But I was always chasing what was next for me.

Book deals. TV shows. Side Hustles. Falling in love with the right person.

Are you lost or something? A guy said, trying to walk into my old apartment building.

I was pacing back and forth, looking from the sky to the sidewalk, daydreaming, and 100% blocking the entrance.

Me? No. I'm not lost. I'm just..

Okay, cool, he said, sidestepping me to go through the revolving doors.

I had 17 minutes to spare before dinner so I walked in circles around the neighborhood. I felt like I had become a ghost of my old self.

I relived the moment I got my first job in New York City on 33rd and Lexington, falling to the ground in disbelief, my friend Tracy pulling me up by my shoulders and giving me the ultimate hug.

I relived another moment outside of a pizza shop I went to after going on the TODAY Show for the first time. I had nobody to celebrate with. So I went there and I ate as many slices of pizza and garlic knots as I could.

Another moment where the wrong person broke up with me at the right time.

Another where I sat on a bench and made a list called "How to Never Go Back Again" after getting laid off from my full-time job and vowing to never have a boss again.

Another where I met a famous author I admired for dinner and where we became best friends. Another where I met a famous musician I adored after sending him a message on Facebook and becoming good friends over coffee.

Another where I had the very worst day of my life. I could have gone on but I realized

I was now three minutes late for dinner and exhausted from vividly reliving so much of my life.

My stomach was sore and my heart felt heavy. We're not supposed to stay here, I reminded myself.

Chapters have to end for you to be able to move onto the next. This chapter has been over for a while but it's only now, thanks to distance and time, that I'm able to come back and relive it again. I am unrecognizable to the Jen Glantz from that chapter. But it felt nice to relive a part of my life that made me and that got me to where I am today.

I just couldn't have seen that at the time.

Did you get lost? My friend asked, joking around. Yes for a second, I replied, the ghost of the old me flying off again.

I put down my purse, looked at my wedding ring, and a photo of Gemma on my phone.

We're always in a chapter of our life and that chapter has to, and will, always end. The chapter I'm in now might end up being called: Disgruntled new-ish mom who is trying to do too much.

But who knows. When I enter the next chapter, I might look back at this one, years and years later, and call it: The years I was a hero holding up diaper creams and my own big dreams.

As I sat down to dinner with my friend, I realized that this moment too would become a memory, a tiny footnote in this chapter of my life. I smiled, knowing that I couldn't stay in any one chapter forever. Life would be too boring if that was the case.

As we clinked our glasses, I toasted silently to the chapters behind me, the ones I can’t go back to, and the one’s I can.

All my love,

Jen Glantz

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⚡Instant Pick Me Ups

📖: Re-reading this because it’s soo good. I bring up facts from this book in every single convo I have lately.

🛍️: What I grabbed this week:

• Jean skirts are very in this fall. I grabbed this longer one and this shorter one.

• This shirt in a bunch of colors to wear with skirts or high-wasited jeans.

• This $26 Lululemon dupe sweatshirt.

🎵: I loved listening to this and watching it too.

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😊 My Real Life:

• I decided to press pause on drinking coffee. For many reasons. But mainly because I found myself so addicted to drinking my one cup of coffee every day. I couldn’t shake the need for that one iced coffee. I wanted to see if I had the willpower to stop drinking coffee and let me tell you — it was TOUGH. Day one without it I was a slug bug. I felt so sick and useless. I just wanted to sleep. I even filled up a cup with coffee and had it on my desk.

  

• I kept saying: Jen, come on. Why are you doing this. Just have the coffee! But after an hour of this debate, I dumped the coffee in the sink and said NO! Willpower! Day two felt blahh too. But now i’m on day six and I feel pretty good honestly. I feel like I have less brain fog (something I haven’t been able to kick since becoming a mom) and I don’t miss it at all. I’ve had a few cups of decaf just for the days I want a fun little drink to sip on. But what a ride. Kicking coffee wasn’t easy and I might go back to having it down the road but for now, I’m enjoying how this feels.