The August Life Audit

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.

I learned the tough way that there’s an unspoken parenting rule that says:

The very second you tell someone that your baby is sleeping well at night, everything changes.

Picture this: I’m standing in a circle with a group of friends from the neighborhood and everyone is asking me, the only friend with a baby, how things are going.

“I think we figured it,” I begin to tell them. “Everything is getting easy. She’s sleeping. She’s eating. She’s hardly ever crying.”

And then, hours later, that all becomes a huge lie.

The internet calls it a 4-month regression period. I like to call it our slow dance phase.

Because I’m doing a lot of that right now.

The Argentine Tango. The Waltz. The Foxtrot.

To help get my baby to eat, sleep, and calm the tears, we stand in the darkest room in our apartment (the bathroom) and slow dance.

What I’m learning is that:

Most of life is in the middle.

You have really good days and really tough ones. But it all evens out.

So if you’re up, remember that when you’re down, and when you’re down, remember that you will rise back up.

It’s just how life works.

I don’t make the rules.

I just always learn them the hard way.

In this issue: August life audit, what I’m wearing in my hat era, and an update on my dream apartment.

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 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

📚: I used to love buying school supplies and since it’s the season for that, I’m refreshing my own work supplies. Starting with new notebooks for my to-do lists.

📄: Good read about who is winning the lottery.

🎧: A friend recommended this podcast and It’s going to be the show I listen to when I cook, clean, and take neighborhood strolls this week.

🎵:Obsessed with this song right now.

🛍️: I’m really into hats these days. The truth is, between my postpartum hair loss and a bad color job, I’m hiding a lot in hats these days. Here are some fun favorites

• A cool bucket hat

• A hat that makes people smile

• An obvious hat choice

• A simple every day hat.

🛠️: I built a tool! It can write you a custom maid of honor speech in minutes. I trained AI technolo

gy to mimic my writing style and chat with people to write them a personalized speech. Check it out here.

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The August Life Audit

August is a silly little month because once it’s over the year always picks up speed and jolts toward the finish line.

I use this month to reset and audit my life and here are a few ways that I do that":

Money

I usually wait until December to do a mega money audit but decided to speed things up around here. I had two main goals in doing this.

First, I wanted to know how much money it costs us to live our lives every single month. Second, I wanted to try to spend less money this year than I spent last year.

On Sunday, Adam and I calculated all of our fixed monthly expenses (rent, utilities, etc.) and opened up all of our credit card statements from January until now. This took forever because between the two of us we have four credit cards. Then we categories all of the purchases and tallied up how much we spend per category every month and how much we spend total every single month.

In my head, it was only costing us a few thousand dollars to live our lives a month. But when I tell you that I was so far off that my jaw hurt from gasping at the sum total again, and again, and again.

We’re not over spenders and we don’t live a luxurious life. But those Amazon purchases and constant Uber Eats food deliveries really add up.

I realized that we’re already on track to spend 25% more this year than we did last year and I really want to spend less so I set a monthly budget to use from August to December and if we stick to it we’ll end up spending $5,000 less than last year and that would be a big win.

Put Offs

We all have a secret little list of things we’ve put off doing this year. Some of my most regrettable things include not calling back an important family member who has been trying to reach me since March, finishing the final chapter of a book I was supposed to finish in 2021, and writing a will (that’s just not something I want to think about). I’m bringing these things to the top of my list because I want to get them done before December.

But the biggest thing I’ve been putting off is going to see all the doctor’s I need to see annually for check-ups. So I made an appointment with: an internist for my annual physical, a dermatologist for a skin cancer check, my OB/GYN for my annual visit, and an eye doctor because my internist recommended I go.

Health is an easy thing to put off but it’s our most important thing. Plus, doctor’s book up in advance. I called in July to make appointments and some doctors were like yeah, no we can’t see you until 2024. I found different doctors and already went to all my appointments.

Clean Ups

I like to use August to make space in my life. Soon, the holiday season will start and things just get busy again. This is the month I clean things out. I delete old emails to empty my inbox, I do a deep clean in the closet. I figure out what relationships in my life are dragging me down and set some boundaries. I delete apps and photos in my phone. I try not to take on anything new (big plans, projects, or distractions) so I can spend the month seeing what’s happening the rest of the year, canceling things I don’t really want to do, and just making space.

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Hello from the inside of my life:

1. I’m entirely grateful to a woman in my apartment building who had a baby the same week I had Gemma. She asked me to come to a pilates this week where you bring the baby. It was so hard (for me) and so fun (for the babies). I’ve had a lot of postpartum anxiety about doing things with Gemma and needed a push to get out of the house and take her somewhere new. It was the spark my week needed. I already signed up to go again on Wednesday.

2. Been flirting with apartments in the neighborhood this week. I found a brand new building opening up next month (when our lease is up) down the street. I reached out to the building’s broker and he was like come by and pick any apartment you want. We’re offering great prices! Adam and I ran around the empty apartment building like we were contestants on Supermarket Sweep. We had a list of places that would be a dream to move into. But then it came time to talk numbers. The “great prices” turned out to be way too expensive for us ($6900+++). Back to square one, my friends!

3. I mentioned that I launched a tool that uses AI to help people write their maid of honor speech. Some of you wanted to know how I built the tool. Adam put me in touch with one of his friends who builds cool things (with cool people) and they offered to work with me on building this. They built the tool tapping into AI and training the tool using 200+ maids-of-honor speeches that I wrote for clients over the years. It’s the first time I’ve worked with other people to build something and it’s been an awesome process. I’m really thankful to the team helping me with this.

Until next Monday…All my love,

Jen Glantz