n each of my classes I provide my students with a little introductory slide show about me. It’s not all that significant, but some students do want to know a little about their instructor, and I have several classes that I never physically meet. One of the little details that I share is my possible addiction to Pinterest.
I will begin by admitting that I have an addictive personality. I am completely able to become obsessed and ultimately addicted to anything. I am prone to taking things too far. I monitor myself, and have friends that are appointed to say, “you need to check yourself.” For example, I was raised with some pretty severe restrictions on television watching. So as an adult I very seldom watched TV. It was not until my father moved in with me in the early 21st century that I purchased a modern television and had cable installed. Almost instantly, TV addiction. I had to move my home office into a room away from all televisions. But that is a story for another day.
Pinterest. In case you are not aware Pinterest is a social media website where you can upload images of anything and other participants can view them. You can create boards to collect images of similar topics. Examples of a few of my boards are “Food,” “Things to do with Yarn,” “Running,” “Future tats,” and “Fun stuff to try.” You can gather cool and interesting ideas off Pinterest, but to do so you need to invest the time into reviewing the existing boards, and that’s where the addition comes in. Fueled by the fact that I can access it on my mobile devices (iPhone and iPad), I can be addicted almost anywhere, at anytime. However, it doesn’t stop there.
I plan Pinterest days. No, I don’t spend the entire day scrolling through Pinterest. Although I could. I spend the day or at least part of it doing stuff that I discovered on Pinterest. I did a weekend of cooking stuff that I found on Pinterest, producing, among other things, Honey Butter Beer bread and Irish Car Bomb cupcakes. Both delightful. I have produced my own version of a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly planner, again using ideas from the Pinterest boards I had hoped to spend this past weekend doing some crafty things (not from the “things to do with yarn” but that’s coming), but something less fun intervened. At this point I don’t recall what that was, but I was annoyed at the time.
And that is my point. Do you take time to have a “Pinterest” day? A day where you are directed to fun by nothing more than a few (hundred) images that you have collected on a website. I think I don’t do that enough. I think that more often than not, I allow “something else” to intervene. Something so mundane that I don’t recall what it was, but it kept me from fun. I believe that in those fun moments we can become closer to God, become closer to thin places that remind us that it ain’t all about us.
How about you? Pinterest day ahead? Count on it. Make it so.
searchingforthinplaces 