Sunday, November 13, 2011

NaBloPoMo: Another Time-Consuming Addiction?

I am sure you have all heard of Pinterest by now.  I requested an invitation a while back, but have stopped myself from joining against every fiber of my being.  I could spend HOURS at my computer a day, and it is not healthy.  I'm wondering if any of you are on it and how you find balance.  When I first discovered blogging it immediately overtook my time on the computer (as did facebook before blogs, as did instant messenger before facebook, etc...).

Now I am fighting off the urge to join the online community of people who love to look at cool stuff, and I would be looking at more cool stuff than I was doing.  UGH.  I am feeling pulled to join today, and I am forbidding myself to join until my house resembles a home and not a trash heap.  It may be a cop-out of a blog for today, but it is what is real on my heart right now!

4 comments:

  1. I spend entirely too much time on the computer (i.e. I'm commenting on your blog right now rather than what I should be doing...work).

    I joined pinterest thanks to our lovely friends over at Young House Love, (another addiction I can blame on you, but certainly a welcome one). I've "pinned" a whole bunch of stuff, from decorating ideas to party planning ideas to recipes. The number of tasks I've actually completed in comparison to the number I've "pinned" however, is dismal.

    1. I made pom-poms for Meredith's room (awesome and easy)
    2. I've roasted asparagas with parmasan cheese
    3. I've cleaned my cookie sheets with baking soda and
    4. I have a ton of ideas for DIY Christmas presents (I know that ideas don't actually count as achievements, but I'm seriously going to do them....SERIOUSLY!)

    I've gotten a ton of design ideas for our bedroom (I've vowed to redo the bedroom before we do another thing to our house).

    Personally, I LOVE Pinterest. I even have a board called "geekdom" where I store all my starwars and silly things that have nothing to do with real life, other than I like the idea of them, and I like to think that storing them on an online corkboard somehow makes me a little cooler. *As if having a lifesize replica of yoda would somehow make me cooler in real life*
    Not to mention, it's nice to see that other people like the same wierd things that I do.

    It can becoming insanely addicting though, so I reserve my Pinning for the evening after M has gone to bed. Usually at the eye rolling of my husband, but I truly only spend about 20 minutes on it and then I'm done. I refuse to go through categories, and I only look at the first page of "Everything".
    If I'm looking for something inparticular, I will search for it, but Pinterest has not replaced google...yet. :)

    I say go for it! Live on the edge of addiction! There are a bunch of activities and projects for kids that I've found on there, and you can look at my "Kid Stuff" board for ideas for Dominic and Liam.
    Join us Renee! Come to the Dark Side!!!!!

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  2. Renee,

    I definitely understand the struggle. It's actually another reason I took a 4 month break from blogging! There was simply too many other things needing my attention- much more important things. There always will be more important things to do than to blog, facebook, pin, etc. Does that mean it's wrong to do them? Only if you're procastinating something important such as your family or your job. But there's a time for everything. It's also important to have hobbies, and personally that's what I look at pinterest and blogging as. When the time is available, I go for it and enjoy myself. Maybe set a timer- lots of laptops have them now for how long you will be on it. Pinterest and blogging are tools. They can be very helpful but very tempting eye candy tools. Pinterest saved me so much time this weekend when I was doing a powerpoint on dressing with dignity (see my blog). I like Lauren's suggestion of not going through all the "pages." Another one that helps is saving it for Sunday or some specific day devoted to rest i.e. change of activity. As far as inspiration overload- I created a board called "pins I've done" to help me keep a perspective on how much time I'm spending looking up projects and how many of them I'm actually doing... hope this helps!

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  3. This will be you...

    http://cheezburger.com/Duohut/lolz/View/5077883392

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  4. Do it! Please :)You have such a great style and so many wonderful ideas. I would love to follow your pins. I've been on for awhile, but just started pinning. I like it because it's like a visual bookmarking system. Rather than bookmarking pages upon pages of all my favorite blogs I can just pin the picture to a board. We will hopefully be doing a lot of work on our house within the next year and Pinterest seems like a good place to keep all my crazy ideas.

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