👋 Tell me about yourself
It's Monday. I'm here for you.
The Pick Me Up is a Monday morning newsletter filled with advice, personal stories, and tips to help you get out of bed and jumpstart your week.
Greetings friend.
It’s me — Jen Glantz.
I’m meeting a lot of new people these days - which means I’m having a lot of these:
Tell me about yourself conversations.
Most people are not very good at talking about themselves.
Most people, when asked that question, don’t even know where to start.
I find that people answer that question in three different ways:
Some share who they were.
Some share who they are now.
Some share who they want to be.
Perhaps the best way to answer that question is with a combo of all three.
You have lived such a dense and dynamic life so far. Share more.
I now introduce myself by sharing a past, a present, and a future.
I’m Jen Glantz. I started a business called Bridesmaid for Hire, I’m now a new mom, and I’m working on creating new tools using AI-technology that make people’s lives easier.
Your turn. Introduce yourself. What’s your then, now, next?
⚡Instant Pick Me Ups
Ps. All of the picks from the past few months are all inside this list here!
📚: Someone recommended this book to me and it seems like a great read for when I’m not soooo tired.
📄: Signs you’re losing a friend.
🎙️: A very popular podcast episode I found on a list.
🎵: A fun morning playlist.
🛍️: A few new favorites:
I plan to just wear these pants for the next 6-9 months.
A comfy sweatshirt top for the chilly work days.
My hair is always in knots. I got this and I’m loving it.
I was curious what the bestselling product on Amazon is. It’s this. I don’t have one! Do you?
🛠️: I built a tool! It can write you a personalized maid of honor speech instantly. We also launched a best man version too — check it out!
I’m not sleeping.
I have a 6-month-old baby who sleeps inches away from me in her crib. She wakes up a lot during the night. Last week, she woke up once an hour, every hour, from 8pm until 7am.
This has been happening for a while now.
I’ve been living my life at full-speed, half-asleep.
Sometimes, I’ll be in the middle of a conversation with someone and my eyes will twist or my words will slip on top of each other.
I am tired most of the time. But mostly, I’m tired of complaining about this.
I like to be an outwardly positive person. My entire world could be collapsing and I’ll put on this song and dance so nobody around me knows. Friend, I’m really good at this. Like gold-medal good at pretending everything is okay. A few years ago, on the absolute worst day of my entire life, I pulled myself together and filmed an episode for a reality show. If you watched the tape, you simply wouldn’t know.
But I’ve lost my edge because my brain is so overworked and drowsy. I can’t possibly be anything these days but unfiltered and frank.
The other morning, after a sleepless night, I ran into a neighbor who innocently asked me how I was doing. I just started crying. This is SO out of character for me. I like to think that this person sees me as an easy-breezy fun 30-something who lives around the block. But on this day, I was a tangled-up tearful mess. She hugged me. It made the crying worse.
I then spent the rest of the day rapidly texting her and apologizing.
Everyone who comes in contact with me has heard about this sleep problem.
Even the cashier at Joe’s pizza who I see three times a week and have never said anything to except: two slices of cheese. Even he’s aware that I’m a sleep-walking mess.
Since it’s been weeks of venting about this to anyone who makes eye contact with me, I finally had a conversation with myself that went like this:
Jen Glantz. What’s the deal? You’ve dealt with much harder things in your life. You’re a determined, smart, and motivated person? When something is wrong in your life, you fix it. Why can’t you fix this?
And the answer is this:
Big problems in our life are just too big to conquer all at once.
Plus, these big problems don’t just have one solution. They have many. But that’s frightfully hard to see when you’re dragging yourself in the mud of it.
When other people hear you vent about your biggest problem, they might stick you with a one-step easy solution, but they don’t know the layers that need to be patched up before you’re able to solve for what’s keeping you up at night (literally).
Let’s say the love of your life breaks up with you, your best friends rush in and say: move on! get on a dating app! meet someone new!
Sure, that’s a solution but there’s a handful of other problems that need solving too.
Maybe you need therapy. Perhaps you have to have to get off social media for a while or block that person. Likely you need to float through the grief cycle a few times too.
Problem solving isn’t so linear, especially when the problem is so personal.
The truth is, working on the biggest problem you have in life takes realizing all the different side problems you need to focus on first.
I’m working on not judging myself for how I’m handling this sleep situation. I’m proud of myself for realizing that I’m not being lazy or avoidant and instead, just doing the best I can, with what I have, at this very moment.
Also —
When you’re going through something tough, people like to tell you that it gets better. But what they don’t tell you is that it might get worse, like way worse, like wow I didn’t see this coming worse, before it gets better.
And maybe it never actually gets better, maybe it just gets so much worse that your tolerance for what better is different than before. You smile at little progress, at change, at things you would have rolled your eyes at before.
I will now no longer tell people it gets better. I will tell them it gets worse, then better, then worse, then better, but when it gets better you appreciate it more.
Love,
Jen Glantz
👩 Real Life Pick-Me-Ups:
This week, tell me about you. What’s going on in your life? What’s new? How are you feeling? What problem are you solving? What’s on your mind?
Hey Jen, I sure empathize with your sleep deprivation due to 6-month old. My wife got 2nd-degree burns on arm due to sleepiness and infant, so take extra precautions.
I love your refreshing take on how we can introduce ourselves. I wrote about introductions a few months ago; I have found that most people introduce themselves by the work that they do, and I have since attempted to introduce myself in many other ways. Unfortunately, most people have an urge to “place” you based on your profession-designation-career, so even if you try not to talk about it, they’ll ask you anyway.
I’m sorry to hear about your hardships as a new mom. I hope that it has already gotten worse, which would mean that it will get better, at least for now. 💕