Hi, It’s Your Older Sister…

Writing my second newsletter proved to be a bit more difficult than writing the first one. The expectations! The growing mailing list! What’s the theme? Do I need a theme? Did I mention the expectations!? But as I type these words it’s clear that the antidote to this sort of paralysis is to just get your butt in the seat. None of the thinking and talking and jotting down ideas and thinking some more got the newsletter done. You know what did? Simply sitting down, opening a new doc and typing Newsletter #2 at the top. Then somehow I just began writing.

So my older-sisterly advice to you today is: just begin. Just literally do it. Stop analyzing. Stop thinking about the ‘what ifs’. Stop second guessing. Trust me, I know getting your proverbial butt in the proverbial seat is way harder than it sounds. Sitting down to do the work—whatever that “work” is for you—is the most impossible part of doing the work. The work is the worst, I know. Take it from someone who would much rather spend her time telling other people to do the work, then do it herself. Sitting down to do the work is so hard Steven Pressfield wrote a whole book about it. Elizabeth Gilbert has an entire podcast series devoted to it. People get paid a lot of money to travel around speaking about this very thing. Every force in this world is working against you getting your butt in the seat. But sit in the seat you must.

Since I’m really good at telling people what to do, giving pep talks comes naturally to me. It’s kind of a prerequisite of being an older sibling, I think. I give them to my real little sister all the time. It doesn’t have to be planned or pre-written, but it does have to come from a place of believing. A pep talk is not effective if there isn’t the ‘I believe in you!’ energy behind it. And so I’m giving us this pep talk because I really do believe that we can, as Glennon Doyle so eloquently puts it, “do hard things”—we can write a second newsletter, learn to keep the plants alive, find time for the at-home workout, make that dreaded phone call, go to sleep earlier, start a meditation practice, drink more water, and try to remain calm every time a toddler refuses to eat something you cooked that they asked for. But we can only do the hard things if we actually do them. Not talk about them, do them. Not think about them or plan them or analyze them, do them. And we can only get on with the doing if we can be ok with not being great at it.

Alas, the theme of this newsletter has emerged: Imperfection is ok. Imperfection is actually more than ok. If you accept it, it’s what will get you in the seat.

So whatever it is you’ve been putting off, procrastinating, pushing aside, it’s time to stop stopping. Better to do it imperfectly than not at all. This newsletter isn’t perfect and I’m (mostly) ok with that. As Anne Lamott said in the How To Be Human podcast, “just start where you are.”

Before I dive into my list of things to try, read, and cook, I will leave you with this. In Week One of The Artist’s Way program, Julia Cameron poses this exercise: “Fill in the following sentence ten times: If I didn’t have to do it perfectly, I’d try __________.” Do it and see what you write down. Why? Because I said so.

xx

Cris Pearlstein, your older sister

Now here’s the part where I tell you what to do…

February 10

Cook something easy

No matter where you are in your cooking-at-home journey, this Mexican Chicken Soup slow-cooker recipe is for you. It’s warm and hearty and a little spicy. It’s healthy and delicious and so simple to make. You don’t even have to follow the recipe exactly (I sure as hell didn’t). I had it for dinner, then lunch the next day, then the day after that I added rice to make it more of a bowl and less of a soup. It’s the kind of recipe you can’t mess up—perfect for (culinary) imperfection.

Get the recipe

February 10

Follow someone new

My most favorite Instagram account right now is @coffeebae97 because instead of making me feel inadequate about my imperfections (ahem, my home decor, my aging face, my parenting style, or the fact that I now exclusively only wear leggings) it just makes me want to drink coffee. Vivian creates the most beautiful caffeinated beverages, set against a soundtrack of calming sounds like classical music, nature noises, or simply the clinking of ice cubes against her impressive array of gorgeous glassware—oftentimes with an inviting slice of sunlight beaming onto the counter. Every post is a choreographed coffee masterpiece that is a feast for the senses. And I don’t care if you don’t like coffee, follow her anyway.

@coffeebae97

February 10

Read a great article

And speaking of how scrolling Instagram can sometimes leave me feeling less-than, the article This Will Be The Year I Stop Being Jealous of Other Women by Jenny Singer (via Glamour) is a thoughtful piece about female jealousy and the science behind it. Singer is a perfectly imperfect narrator, who shares a refreshingly honest confession: “I don’t know how to stop being jealous,” which is one of the most relatable sentences I’ve ever read. She breaks down the primal need for women to compete with one another, using her own behavior as an example. Then she has a revelation: I’m “tricking myself into believing that happiness and security are scarce resources, when I could allow them to be infinite”. If you too want to live in a world where there’s an infinite pool of good things available to all of us, give it a read. And then try, however imperfectly, to undo the jealousy that lives within you.

Here’s the article

February 10

Go (a little) greener

And speaking of feeling green, let’s talk about going green. (Terrible segue, I know, but this imperfect segue got the words on the page so…case in point?)

Anne-Marie Bonneau, the Zero Waste Chef, said, “we don’t need a handful of people doing zero-waste perfectly, we need millions of people doing it imperfectly.” I love this quote so damn much. Whenever I get overwhelmed thinking about the decline of our environment, and all the ways in which I’m contributing to that decline (which happens often), I remember her words. I focus on doing small things, and little by little these small things really add up. In the last newsletter I challenged you to forgo those stupid plastic produce bags in the supermarket. Today I’m asking you to reuse plastic bags—not just the obvious ones that scream “reuse me!”, but also the weirder, more obscure bags, too. Listen, almost any version of a plastic bag can have a second life. A resealable zip-top bag that once held flour tortillas is the perfect size for the little garbage pail I have in my bathroom. The long and narrow bag that once held a loaf of sliced sourdough bread also serves as a receptacle for dirty diapers. The giant pack of toilet paper you bought mid-pandemic is wrapped in a big enough piece of plastic to fake a big kitchen garbage bag. And for the love of God if you insist on buying boxes of Ziploc bags, please rinse them, dry them, and use them again and again for anything and everything for as long as they last. But also, stop buying Ziploc bags.

A few easy swaps for greener living

I’d love to hear from you!

Are you dying to tell me how much you love my newsletter? Are you desperate to tell me how right I was about something I told you to read, watch, or do? Or do you need some older-sister advice about something that’s been plaguing you? Hit me with it.