Pinterest - Tool or Obsession

I'll admit it.  I Pinterest.

When I saw all those other people raving about Pinterest and excitedly talking about all the great things that were no where else to be found I felt like a kid who hadn't been invited to the neighborhood birthday party. Add to that illusion by the fact that you had to be invited to join! I asked to be invited and gingerly held my breath, hoping I would make the grade and become one with that elite group, known as Pinteresters.
It was about 60 grueling minutes later that I got an e-mail congratulating me on the fact that I had passed the bar.  I could now Pinterest at my leisure.

At first it was a few quick peaks.  I didn't understand the format.  Why were there repin buttons and like buttons?  What is that deal about "boards"?  So I chalked it up to another one of those fads that I didn't see myself getting caught up in. And I quit trying.

But I kept seeing all these people I knew, intelligent creative people, who kept posting links to fabulous finds they discovered using Pinterest.  Finally I caved, and went knocking back on the Pinterest door.

And that's when I started to figure things out.

I am in charge of organizing my own pins. 
I create Boards (like bulletin boards) to pin my ideas onto.

My Hints and Helps for Pinterest Happiness and Success:

• If I don't want to just keep recycling all the stuff that all my relatives and close personal friends have been repinning from each other over and over until all of us have the same exact pins on all of our same exact boards, THEN I go to the top where it says "Categories" and choose a new subject that I want to explore.  THEN I see a whole lot of unrelated random people's pins that I can then clam for my own and pin onto my own wall and I can feel unique for about a half a day which is about how long it will take for all my relatives and close personal friends to see my new item and repin it onto their own walls.
• There are always those items that I REALLY want to try, but I'd rather there not be that exact same item in every house on my block, so instead of repinning, I save that website to Favorites.  That's right.  Sometimes I don't share.  I'm selfish like that.
• Sometimes I actually DO the stuff I find on Pinterest!!!! 
• Just because someone takes a beautiful wood cabinet and sands it down and paints it with pastel swirlies and polka dots and calls for comments on how much better it looks, I do not usually agree. It's okay to not think everything on there is "to die for".
• Don't judge what's going on in people's lives but what they're pinning.  I am currently pinning baby ideas, but I assure you, I am not pregnant.
• Before I repin, I will click on the link that shows where the pin came from.  Sometimes I see a repin from a repin from a repin before I actually get to the place that originated the whole idea.  Then I will use my OWN Pin It link to mark the page. I know later people will thank me.
• Dont try to scroll back up to the top.  Your computer will freeze.  Hit that "Scroll to top" button instead.
• Don't freak out when you click on something to have a closer look and then go back to the main page and everything looks different.  Pinterest seems to randomly change the order of things you see so that everyone gets an equal chance to be on the top of the list, I guess.
• Don't judge the quality of the pin by the repinner's apparent lack of grammar. No one uses the pronoun "I" in Pinterest.  You are immediately branded a newby if you say "I love this" instead of "Love this". Check out the pin anyway.  You can enjoy something cute without having to talk about it.

And that, my friends, is how I use Pinterest.