👋 The psychic made a big mistake
It's Monday. I'm here for You.
Every now and then I pay people to predict my future and tell me what’s going to happen in the next 3-6 months. I kiss their breath with my ears. Their words become my textbook.
What else is there to believe in these days?
There’s pleasure in spending uninterrupted time with a stranger who spits out crumb-size guesses about your life that make you go: Wow, this is SO spot on.
I end up using most of my time with these psychics and tarot card readers telling them everything about my life, even when I’m paying them to do that. I guess I could get the same kind of thrill from therapy. But in 2024, this kind of stuff is cheaper. Plus, I don’t have to see these people again.
You’d think after what happened in 2016 with a psychic named Diane, I’d never spend money on something like this again. But I’m not someone who enjoys learning from mistakes. Especially when they involve putting my life in someone else’s hands for a few minutes.
Welcome to the Monday Pick-Me-Up. Let me take you back to February 14th, 2016. I’m at a Valentine’s Day party for singles. I spend $50 for a few minutes with a psychic. She tells me the worst thing a psychic could tell a single at a Valentine’s Day party. But it changed my whole life.
Ps. If you know anyone who would get excited reading these Monday emails, could you share this with them? It would be the best Valentine’s Day gift ever for you online bestie who loves very little more than writing these silly little things.
It’s my turn, so I sit down in front of a woman who looks like she raided the jewelry section of Claires.
“Come on, honey.” Her hand flaps. “Speak! What question do you have?”
“Just one?” I ask, crumpling a napkin in my palm. On it, a long list of things I was hoping to get answers to.
The psychic’s eyes boomerang. Behind me, the line of people waiting for her attention is getting longer. My time is getting shorter. I quit wasting it.
Career or Love? Love or Career? I wrestle both topics in my mind, desperate for help.
Those are the two areas of my life that haunt me like voicemails from telemarketers. I don’t want to answer, but that doesn’t mean they still don’t dial my number with questions.
Career! I scream in my head.
“Love!” I say out loud to the psychic. “Please tell me about my love life.”
Sorry, career. I adore you, sometimes more than anything else. But in this moment, I need to know how much longer I’m going to be dining at a table for one, declining plus ones on wedding invitations.
“Current love?” she drawls, with a high-pitched, over-exaggerated mystical accent that makes her stubborn New Jersey accent sound like a passport of all of the places in her life she’s traveled to. “Or future love?”
“Come on! Shouldn’t you know I don’t have a current anything? Unless you count the guy at coat check who showed me his teeth when I handed him my jacket and yelled, ‘Checkmate!’ That’s about as close to flirting as I get these days,” I overshare.
I stop talking and shake my head. Who actually believes in psychics anyway? I don’t think I do. But then again, I’m not too sure. I did wait in a 45-minute line, in 16-degree weather, to get into this Valentine’s Day party for “Lonely Hearts” just to get as many life answers as I could in this $50 15-minute session.
What New Yorkers will do for cheap entertainment is bonkers.
But when it’s cold out, and you haven’t left your apartment in four days, and you’re afraid to spend your third Valentine’s Day in a row sinking into the couch, binge-eating raw cookie dough and pity laughing at some ’90s Meg Ryan rom-com, there’s a refreshing kind of beauty in spending time with a stranger who may or may not have the power to tell you the game plan of your life.
I once met a woman who went to a psychic in the East Village and got the news that a year from that moment she’d meet a guy whose name started with the letter B and fall in love.
Two years later, inside a tequila-scented bar with a broken PAC-MAN machine, she told me about how she was engaged to a guy named Brian.
A little prediction, I thought, even if it was as spotty as a weatherperson predicting rain in Florida, was better than approaching this love thing totally blind.
Yet, here I am, six months later, sitting in front of a psychic named Diane, hoping she’ll just get to the point and tell me the guy’s name will start with a Z or a P just so I could know that there was at least one guy out there I was destined to marry.
“I have bad news for you,” the psychic says.
No, oh no, no. You never want to hear the following people say they have bad news for you: a doctor, a dry cleaner, or someone you love dearly. But perhaps the most confusing person to utter those words is a psychic.
No news, I imagined, was better than bad news. Ignorance is bliss, but when it comes to your heart, ignorance is all we have.
“Ha! You, honey, may never find love. Looks like you’ll grow old and be miserable like me.”
“Excuse me, Diane.” I lean forward, my eyes like spotlights, wide open and bright. “Is this some kind of early April Fool’s joke?”
“Looks like it’s going to take a year for you to even be ready to find someone.”
“A year?” I complain. “I’m ready now!” I swat my fist on her wobbly table. Her tarot cards do backflips, as if to say: Jen, we too are confused by this news.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “You need time.”
“TIME! I DON’T NEED TIME!”
Behind me, people’s ears are turned inward, their mouths smirking at my misfortune, counting their luck, realizing since I was given the curse of being loveless the odds must be in their favor.
“Until then, do things for yourself. Travel?”
My eyes splatter out tears.
“Oh, here is something interesting,” she continues, though I wish she wouldn’t.
She flips over a line of tarot cards. One with a dagger on it, another fire, and finally a crown.
“Go to Disneyland. That’s what you should do.”
I sit back in the chair. My face flushes. My heart punches. “Disneyland? Are you kidding me?”
Love is not some fairy tale, I know that.
But here I am, having a staring contest with psychic Diane, who is telling me that I’m supposed to go off and marry Mickey Mouse or ride Space Mountain and fall in love with the attendant who will clean up my post-rollercoaster puke.
“I wish I had better news for you,” she mutters, rolling her wrist, signaling me to skedaddle. “But I don’t! Next!”
“Oh,” I say, doomed. The dagger, the fire, the crown, all stabbing my heart at once.
When I get up, I ask the woman at the bar who went before me if the psychic had given her a similar prescription.
“No! She said I’m going to meet my match at this party, so, umm, would you mind leaving me alone? I want to seem coy and available.”
I back away, eyeing Diane and the next victim approaching her.
What scared me the most about my love diagnosis at the time was that it seemed right. For most of my twenties, I was single.
I penned an entire memoir about how all my friends were getting engaged and I couldn’t even land a second date. JDate, the dating app for Jewish singles, ran banner ads with my face on it, advertising the app as a place for people like “Jen Glantz: always single, always looking.” A cousin tried to set me up with another cousin of ours, because, well, she felt I was running out of options (some days I agreed with her).
I went to matchmakers, had my mom manage my dating apps, and tried out for the Bachelor not once, not twice, but three times.
I should have believed the psychic. I should have woken up every morning and repeated her words like a mantra. But for some reason, I didn’t. I couldn’t help it – I still believed in love.
Because of Diane’s words, I set out on a mission to find love. I went on 14 first dates in one month. I met nobody I ever wanted to see again.
Of course, Diane. Of course you’re right.
I went to delete my dating app when I had one outstanding message from a guy who asked to take me out for coffee. One month and five days after the psychic told me I’d never find love, I met Adam.
Four years after I sat across from Diane, I found her on the internet and sent her the email below. Why? When someone gives you advice, you say ‘thank you’, even if it’s after the fact.
Because words have the power to make change us, even if we don’t realize it.
This story is an excerpt from my new book Finally the Bride. I have one more chapter left to write and it’s finished. If you want to read the whole book for free, become a paid subscriber to this newsletter and you’ll get access (along with lots of other perks). Thank you <3
⚡Instant Pick Me Ups:
📚: The title of this book really got me. I’m going to give it a read on a rainy weekend and maybe make a casual billion dollars.
❤️: Valentine’s gifts you can get by Wednesday (If you forget to get stuff!)
A lot of kisses
Make a bouquet of chocolate bars
Fun accessories
A good gift for the the home
For your friend’s kid
For yourself to wear around the house
I never know what to get Adam but here were some ideas I had this year: speaker, photo song, fire pit, LOL at this, and for his desk.
🎵: This song is everything. I get really happy listening to it.
😮 Progress Report:
I really went all in with two different skincare lines (UpCircle and CocoKind). Both are inexpensive and also very clean. I picked them up at Whole Foods and after two weeks of trying almost every product in each of their lines, here’s what I loved the most.
Obsessed with this moisturizer. Lightweight. I’m excited to put it on my skin - and I am someone who never liked moisturizer before.
I use this cleansing balm twice a day. I love how it smells.
I’m having a good time alternating between these three items. I see a difference in my skin: tumeric, chia seed, and this for acne (gives my skin a mini peel).
I did not like: this jelly cleanser (it smelt horrible) and this scrub got in my eyes and it was annoying to use.
One thing about me is that when I love something, I loooooveee it until I can’t stand it anymore. Except for pizza. But I’m loving cooking these days as long as I cook the same four basic recipes on repeat. I made this dish three times in a week and by the third time it was Michelin star worthy in my dreams of course.
Your girl has a physical therapy appointment for the end of the month. After only 10 email back and forth exchanges with a new spot, we finally got the appointment squared away. I’m trying this new thing where I attempt to be brutally honest at all times. After booking my appointment, I sent the email below:
I guess I was hoping the receptionist would say: come in early, Jen. We give hugs for free. People (me) these days are always expecting so much from businesses and businesses are just trying to do their job! Anyway, I’m going in a few weeks and i’ll update you after my first appointment - if I don’t cancel :)
Why you’re getting this: I'm Jen Glantz and this is The Monday Pick-Me-Up newsletter. I've been sending it every Monday, for 9-years, to thousands of awesome humans, just like you. Thank you for letting this email live in your inbox. It truly makes my heart explode with joy.
Become a paid subscriber: I’m building a community here with private Zoom hang-outs, workshop, bonus content, and more! Join the community and support the newsletter by becoming a paid subscriber in 2024 for $5 a month. Thank you so much for considering :)
If you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack!