A Pinterest Manifesto

I feel like I need to spout about this.

I am more acquainted with the operating principles of Pinterest than most people. And I understand that for many, this is a source of creative inspiration and delight.

So here's the thing. I refuse to follow boards that talk about food, or beauty.  Maybe this is touchy of me, but the food ones either make me hungry, and then guilty for feeling hungry, or make me wistful for the things I should not eat, and then guilty that I don't cook enough, and THEN I also feel bad about allowing food this power over me.  Yes, I'm in therapy. No, it's not touching this just yet. And this is to say nothing of the many websites out there pushing their own soapbox agendas: Gluten is evil, soybeans are evil, meat is murder, fishing is ruining the planet, agave is a killer, stevia is an a

Beauty is sort of the same. While I admire a lot of the creativity out there, collecting tips on beauty for me is tantamount to stapling pictures of other people to my psyche. I will never figure out how to have perfect hair or nails, or skin, or legs, or whatever, and I feel like Pinterest in many ways begins a whole new and considerably more dangerous grassroots and DIY realm of perfection-seeking objectification.  And again, this is to say nothing of the folks pushing their own beauty remedies (for all else, so much like Sir Kenelem Digby and Sir Hugh Platt that I just HAVE to laugh) - face cream made of almond oil and toothpaste? Cold cream made from coconut oil and avocado? I give you all your leave to try it, but I've done my reading and I know that sometimes an industrial process isn't a bad thing when we're talking beauty treatments.

Anyway, if you're a Pinterest friend of mine, and you see me slowly defriending you, it's nothing personal, it's just a sanity-related choice.

I realize that when I feel like I have a two-page Facebook status, I'm going to migrate it to an actual, you know, BLOG.

Fantastic wedding of two friends, one of whom I've known since high school (and miraculously kept in touch with). And by "miraculously" I mean, "possibly infected him with this 'dancing' thing, which means I get to see him at Dickens".  The wedding was beautiful, and I got to see tons of people I knew and catch up. I mean there were like maybe twenty people there who I didn't already know - We're talking Draggin' Bytes, UCSC, Renaissance Faire, Dickens Fair, and Belmont House - all wrapped up into one long scrawling social network.  There was dancing, oh there was dancing!  And I got to see a lovely gentleman all dressed up in a gorgeous new tuxedo - and take him home.

Today is cleanup, because I was literally frantic trying to figure out how to get my hair to do the thing I wanted it to do - I spent an hour trying to figure out some way to mousse, curl, gel, or pin it, and in the end I got something *close* to the roll effect I wanted, so I just piled lots of other stuff on top and nobody could tell. So today I sort things back to where they ought to go, put the many items of dry cleaning into the dry-cleaner bag, and so on.

All at once

For weeks, things have been painfully stagnant, slow, and painful at work. I've been waiting waiting waiting and every question has had a one or two-week latency.

Today things began to move. And by move, I mean quickly. At 4pm I got an email introduction, at 7pm I was on a new team list.

I am both thrilled and terrified by the velocity of the change.