Making Friends is Harder Than Dating

It's Tuesday. 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 didn’t send you an email yesterday because it was September 11th and It didn’t feel right to take up space in your inbox or your life.

It’s an incredibly difficult day for so many people. Even 22-years-later, New York City wears this veil of thick fog on that day. When you walk around, it feels hard to see anything except the clouds surrounding the city from above.

Ask anyone and they’ll know exactly where they were on September 11th, 2001. I was in fourth grade. I lived in Florida. I didn’t understand what was happening. But my story doesn’t matter. I wasn’t there. At the time, I didn’t know anybody who was. Years later, I moved to New York City, I met people who were downtown that morning. I met people who lost loved ones that day. Their stories were harrowing and horrific. Every September 11th, I read articles, watch videos, and listen to people share about that day. Life goes on and we slowly forget. But what happened on that day should be never be forgotten.

In this issue: Thoughts on new friendship, a desk upgrade, and a birthday fun fact.

Why you’re getting this: I'm Jen Glantz and this is The Pick-Me-Up newsletter. I've been sending it every Monday, for 8-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.

Ps. I’m so grateful that you’re reading this because writing this newsletter every week is my favorite thing. If you know anyone who would adore getting this in their inbox, it would mean the world if you’d share it.

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⚡Instant Pick Me Ups

Ps. All of the picks from the past few months are all inside this list here!

📚: I grabbed coffee and a muffin with an internet friend last week who is also an author. She’s doing something awesome and releasing her novel 20-years after it was originally published. I can’t wait to read this book for the first-time when it comes out in October.

ps. a really fun newsletter for a good book recommendations

📄: “The key to resilience is not denying reality.” An article about the phrase: It is what it is.

🔎:A real fun fact is that most of the most common birthdays are in the month of September.

🎵: I can’t stop listening to this song. When I’m rocking Gemma to sleep at night, I sing this song in my head and it makes me really happy.

🛍️: I really used to love going back to school shopping with my mom so I’m using this time of year to upgrade my work environment (which is a tiny corner of the kitchen table). But anyway, it deserves style, comfort, and a cool refresh.

• Unique lamp alternative

• I grabbed two of these for pens

• Stylish vase for fresh flowers

• Easy to hang these above or near your desk for storage

• Serious desk goals is to have this under my desk. I need a bigger apartment first and then want to buy this.

🛠️: I built a tool! It can write you a custom maid of honor speech in minutes. We just added a feature where you can test it out too in case you want a glimpse of how it all works. Plus, it was the #2 product on Product Launch last week.

💬:You already have the answers you need inside of you. You just need to find silence to hear them. Heard this in a SoulCycle class and for some reason found solace in it.

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It’s Hard Making Friends

I’m in my friend marking era.

90% of my friends no longer live in New York City. Most have become long distance pen pals, the kind you call, text, and FaceTime more than you would if they still lived down the block.

I wouldn’t necessarily be on the hunt for new pals, but I’m a new mom and my favorite thing to do is stop another new mom on the street and say hello.

The postpartum journey is a wickedly lonely and secretive one. All I want is to find another new mom I can hug and say: how the heck did we make it through yesterday?

So I have a Rolodex of people I’ve met recently and I’m making little new friend plans with them. Nothing too serious.

An afternoon croissant.

A Sunday morning coffee down the street.

A stroll around the park.

Making new friends is unexpectedly hard.

I’d argue it’s harder than dating, but maybe it’s just different.

Love is very yes or no. You are either attracted to the person and pulsing with glee to see them again or you are not.

Friendship is a murky middle ground that you’re backstroking in until you figure out how the other person feels about spending some of their precious time with you, and how you feel about letting them into your life too.

Friendships don’t have expectations or paths forward that they follow.

It’s just two people doing things together, occasionally, until one of them moves on or both of them keep hanging on.

Wouldn’t it be a thrill to meet a new friend and just get right to the point? I’d love to say: Hello, I’m looking for a best friend who wants to go on long walks and talk about childhood struggles and eat pizza on my living room floor and take the subway into Manhattan on a Thursday night to try a random new thing, what about you?

But instead, it’s a little about me, and a little about you, every week, like we’re watching a sitcom in the 90’s, one 30-minute episode at a time.

The biggest problem I have with new friendships is that I want them to feel old from the start. I want our conversations to be worn with stains. I want to know their life story and I want them to know mine. I want us to have inside jokes by the time the ice in our coffee has turned into a puddle.

I came home from coffee with a person I had just met.

It went okay. I told Adam before then telling him how much I miss a best friend who moved across the country.

Not everyone you meet is going to be a life-long friend. He reminded me.

But why can’t they be?

The truth is, 90% of the people we meet, end up just being people we knew for a little time, here and there. 10% become much more, for much longer.

Though it’s also true that we share something with everyone we meet, even if we’ll never see them again.

It can feel hard to make new lifelong friends until you realize that nobody you meet starts off as best friend material.

Best friends are the people who learned everything about you and spent so much time around you that they can co-write your autobiography.

That stuff takes time.

And it starts with one little coffee, croissant, or stroll around the park.

I’m in an era where I’m finally open to doing that.

And it’s thrilling, I won’t lie, but also exhausting too.

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👩 Real Life Pick-Me-Ups

• Zero apartment updates. We have to either resign our lease in this 500 sq foot apartment next week or move out. Time is ticking. Boxes have not been packed. Adam did the thing where he asked me if we had all the money in the world where I’d want to live. The answer is always the same and it’s always a no-brainer. Brooklyn and Venice Beach. Nowhere else ever feels like home.

• I took myself on a solo Sunday night date to see my favorite comedian. I was super anxious about going to a comedy club alone. When I arrived, we had to wait in this bar area before the show started and I didn’t want to stand in the corner on my phone and appear anti-social. I love people! I can just be a little shy. So I went to the bar, ordered a soda, and scanned the room. A few feet away from me, there was another woman who was standing alone (also drinking a soda), and looking around the room. We started chatting and both realized we loved the same comedian but didn’t have anyone who wanted to come with us to the show. We chatted and even sat together during the performance. The night was a fun reminder that if we fight the urge to hide from the world, we often find something we are looking for. In this case, it was friendship.

• I think people put a lot of pressure on themselves to grow and change and evolve and to be more like (fill in the blank) and less like themselves. But I’m watching my baby start to show a little of her personality and it’s reminding me that we all have things about us that make us unique, lovable, and simply just us. We have to bring those qualities to the surface more. Perhaps, every now and then, we have to forget about who we’re becoming and adore who we are right now.

Until next week (say hello in the comments),

Jen Glantz