🎂 No joke, it's my birthday.

It's Monday. I'm here for you.

Apr 01, 2024

Hi, my friend.

Jen Glantz here. Today is April Fools’ Day and it’s also my birthday. I was born on quite possibly one of the oddest days of the year.

I’m used to the birthday pranks by now.

I have been blowing out trick birthday candles and answering calls that say I won a million dollars for 36 years.

In middle school, a guy who could change the way my heart beat just by speaking to me, came up to me on my birthday and said: You’re the most beautiful girl in the entire world.

I turned watermelon red. Between the dart board of cystic acne on my face and thick braces covering my teeth, guys didn’t rush up to tell me that often (EVER). Hearing him say that made me practically faint into my lunch tray. But before I could, he screamed out: April Fools! And the entire cafeteria laughed up their lasagna.

It’s easy to have a birthday on April Fools’ Day and just want to melt in a corner and not accept love from even the most well-intentioned people in your life. You’re scared. You’re anxious. You’re paranoid that everyone is trying to trick you.

But then you grow up and you realize that having a birthday on April Fools’ Day is a blessing because it teaches you a lesson early on that often takes others decades to learn on their own.

Welcome to the Monday Pick-Me-Up. My birthday has been a mishmash of ugly and unlucky things throughout my life. But something happened on an airplane that changed everything. Wait till you hear this story. It’s quite a mile-high thrill.

Ps. I am forever grateful that you are here and reading this. Life is nothing without a purpose and writing has always been mine. Thank you for eyeballing this newsletter every Monday. Knowing that you’re here with me is perhaps the greatest gift I could ask for in this lifetime.

April Fools’ Don’t Cry

The other night, a friend at dinner asked me what I’m the most excited about for my next year on this planet.

I ripped off the crust of my pizza and held it tightly in my hand.

I’m not sure. I lied to her.

Birthdays have always made me want to be invisible — even if just for the day. There’s something so enormously sad and freakishly jolly about turning another year older. You see yourself in the mirror and you notice that your skin has stretched and your lips feel heavier to curve, and it’s you, of course, but it’s not you you. You want to celebrate that you’re alive, and mourn all of the things that aren’t anymore, at the same time.

A few years ago, I put a plan in place to completely ignore my birthday. I made my Facebook profile private so people couldn’t wish me a happy birthday there. I turned off my phone for the day. I avoided friends and family. I spent the day alone, pretending it was just another Tuesday. It was a wild and epic success.

Until, I got on an airplane.

I was on a JetBlue flight back to New York City, sitting in the middle seat with my hat, headphones, and hood on. Other than negotiating space on the arm rest, with quick elbow nods, my seat mates didn’t care about my existence. I loved that about them.

But halfway through the flight, everything changed.

A flight attendant got on the speakerphone and asked if someone by the name of Jen Glantz would please stand up.

I was drifting in and out of my own dreams. Surely this was the plot of one of them. How creative, Jen. I closed my eyes, pushed my seat back even more, and retreated into my own world.

Excuse me, I heard someone from above say. It’s your time.

I was dreaming of clouds swaying back and forth. Who the heck was talking to me? God?!

I opened my eyes and there she was.

A flight attendant, with a balloon, standing beside my row. The people next to me perked up. I sunk lower, and lower, and lower.

Another flight attendant got back on the speakerphone.

It looks like we found Jen Glantz in seat 11B. Everyone, from all directions, turned to look at every possible angle of my head.

I had survived many April Fools’ Day pranks in my life but this one was becoming the most elaborate and unfortunate one because I couldn’t escape it. There wasn’t an emergency exit and both of the bathrooms were occupied. All I could think about what was whether or not my body was small enough to army crawl underneath the seats.

Here at JetBlue, the flight attendant on the loud speaker continued, April Fools’ Day is not a joke to us.

My eyes did a figure eight. oh no. oh no. oh no.

So can we please have our April Fools’ Day birthday passanger stand up so we can wish her a happy, happy, birthday.

I leaned over to the flight attendant next to me.

No, please, wait a second. I reached for her arm and begged.

What’s wrong? Is it not your birthday?

No, it is, but I’m trying to ignore it. I just want to be invisible…

Before I could finish my monologue, people were chanting for me to stand, so I stood. The entire plane of 225 people sang me happy birthday on the ONE birthday I did everything in my power to ignore.

Perhaps the shy 22 year old version of Jen Glantz who thought she had the power to control the hilarity and horrors of the world would have cried in that moment but the well-lived 30-something version of me found this to be the most epically insane thing that could happen to a person who worked overtime to avoid her birthday. So I laughed all the way till the final happy birthday to you.

It wasn’t all too bad because after it was over and I sat down, they announced that they were gifting me a free one-way plane ticket, which I used for a solo trip to Los Angeles later that year.

I failed at ignoring my birthday but finally realized that all the hoopla — the wishes, the candles, the gifts, the messages, aren’t really what the day is supposed to be about.

If anything, our birthday reminds us that we’re still alive, and that we’re doing just fine, and that we should love the right things harder and leave the wrong ones faster and even if we have a million wishes for ourselves, we’ll forget about most of them by tomorrow, anyway.

Come on, Jen! My friend asks again. What’s one thing you’re looking forward to this year?

Ask anyone with a birthday on April Fools’ Day and they will tell you that after you get over always be pranked as the punchline to the jokes, you realize that life is nothing but a series of startles and wonders. Nothing worthwhile is predictable anyway. Get used to it. Get good at it. Listen to me now, wish for it. It’s the best thing you could ever do.

“The surprises,” I said. “Because that’s really all any of us can plan for anyway.”

⚡Instant Pick Me Ups

📚: I haven’t read this but yet the author is someone I truly admire and I listened to her talk about this book on a Zoom call and her passion oozed through the screen. She’s my current author crush.

🎵: New music out by some one who always releases good songs that make you want to dance.

🎁: A great gift for someone who loves pizza and even better if they just moved and you want to get them a housewarming gift.

🎁: Gift yourself (and/or someone you adore) a subscription to this newsletter and get 20% off the yearly membership fee :)

👗: Picks of the week

It’s a new season so it’s time for us to all get new socks
A good basic t-shirt with a fun flair
Perfect length jean shorts
I have my eyes on these shoes
Love this for the spring season

Ps. a full list of pick-me-ups are right here.

😮 Progress Report:

I’m really feeling passionate about getting my life back on track. Year one of motherhood kicked my ass. I felt like I wasn’t actually living inside of my own life and instead floating around it. I can attach that to so many things — I didn’t have a single day of maternity leave, we don’t have any childcare, and the intense lack of sleep feels like it permanently dented my brain. I’m not sharing this as a complaint. I have loved spending time with my baby girl and watching her grow up. The honest truth is (and maybe i’m just doing the mom thing wrong) that year one cost me a lot of who I am and I want to put some of the things that make me Jen Glantz back into my world.
I’m trying something new on my birthday this year. Instead of making wishes (which we often have no control over whether or not they come true), I am making promises to myself. Promises aren’t goals. Goals are things you work toward. Promises are things you just do and you don’t stop doing. I am making three simple promises and I’ll vaguely share what they are:
- I will stop running away from my purpose in life. I have known from a very young age what I am meant to spend my days on this planet doing. I will not waste any more of my time flirting with other things because I’m scared to live out my truth.
- I will forgive faster and just move on. A distinct character flaw of mine is that I will marry a grudge and live happily ever after with it for far too long. I am so sad about this because life is painfully short and it’s just not worth it to spend so much time fighting about things or trying to prove a point --- all of the time. I will break free from this.
- I will be healthier. I will take better care of my body because it’s the case that holds together everything that I am inside. In the last year, my body has done things that seriously blew my mind. I grew a baby inside of it for 10 months. I birthed a baby out of it and was (slowly) able to recover from that. I made milk that fed my baby for over a year. I will to spend this year celebrating my body, making it stronger and eating better.
Closing out this week by expressing how grateful I am again for you, dear reader and friend. I’ve been writing since I was six. It’s all I ever wanted to do and I just want to thank you for supporting me by reading this, sharing this, and being right here every single Monday.

The Monday Pick Me Up

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