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When You're Obsessed With the Past

It's Monday. I'm Here for You.

Jen Glantz

Feb 21, 2023

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. Lately, I’ve been playing memories of my past on repeat.

It’s like someone shoved me into a snow globe of all my best life moments and won’t let me out.

I’m knocking on the glass. But nobody hears. It’s as if the universe wants me to be stuck 15-years-years backward.

Who am I kidding.

It’s as if I want to go back in time, to 15-years-ago.

Would I do anything differently?

I’d be a fool to say no.

But I’d love who I loved, even the ones who were wrong for me.

And I’d make a lot of the same mistakes, especially the ones I vowed I’d never make again, because those are the kinds of things that raise you, when you’re already an adult.

Being nostalgic is a silly little thing that makes us forget how powerful the present is and makes us forget how heavy the past was, at times.

This morning, I’m reminding myself of one simple thing:

I can make today become one of those memories I hope I can’t stop thinking about in another 15-years. I can do that. You can do that too.

In this issue: What to do when nostalgia takes over your brain, kitchen favorites, and a song I’m playing on repeat.

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.

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When You're Obsessed With the Past

Is life right now all about looking back and daydreaming about the past?

Adam and I grabbed bagels and coffee and parked in front of the first apartment he lived in New York City.

Tell me your favorite moments, I asked downing the largest hot coffee I could get my paws on in this cold weather.

He told me about the bar below him, the spots across the street, what it was like being so young and so in love with a city like Manhattan.

Lately, I can’t stop daydreaming about my 20’s as if I’m constantly flipping through the pages of a scrapbook.

Sometimes, in the middle of writing an email I forgot what word to put down and close my eyes and pretend I’m 26, it’s a Friday night, and my two best friends are in my living room getting ready for a night hitting up our favorite basement dance floors.

It’s like I’ll be doing the dishes and all of a sudden I can’t stop thinking about living with my roommate Kerri and the thousands of nights we spent together laughing on the couch.

I can’t even drive through Manhattan without feeling something knock on my stomach. I hold onto the cup holder and live through the flashbacks of the life changing news I got over the years on these narrow little streets.

News of my first job happened in front of a nail salon in Murray hill with my friend Tracy there to fall to the ground and cry with me.

News of my book deal happened right on the edge of Times Square. I high-fived tourists for an entire afternoon.

The worst news of my life happened right outside my favorite lunch spot - The Picnic Basket. I will not walk down that street. I don’t ever want to see that street again.

It feels like my 30’s are about going backward. I’m spending so much time thinking of people, places, conversations and stories that are too good nobody would believe they are true.

Is that what happens when you grow up? Is it just one of those things nobody ever talks about? Something nobody ever tells you when they tell you what it’s like to be all grown up?

It feels like lately I crave the past, like I’m addicted to the past, like I’d do anything to go back and be in the past.

Sometimes I mean that. I really mean that.

And sometimes I remember all it took to get here, and I think the past is best where it is - in the rear view mirror, heading the opposite way, as I follow the green lights forward.

It’s just sometimes it feels so good to momentarily forget that as a sip of fresh hot coffee slips down my throat.

Love,

Jen Glantz