I always want to spell pinterest without the e in the middle. Like, pintrest. Which is, honestly, very silly because 'trest' isn't a word. Or maybe it is a word? I'm not really sure.
Anywho. We had almost failed at the 'blog every day this week' challenge I had set for myself. Firstly because my spell check has gone on the fritz again (what even firefox?) and secondly becauase my laptop has decided it needs a new internal battery. This seemed a simple enough task. Except! It turns out that laptops have 3, possibly 4, batteries. There's the one you plug into the wall. Then there's the one that's attached to your laptop. Then there's a CMOS battery INSIDE your laptop. And finally there's a potentially mysterious battery which MIGHT be the internal battery or perhaps the internal battery is the one that's attached to the outside of your laptop. Having determined that, sort of, I then went looking for a new battery - this turns out to be a rabbit hole of Lewis Carroll tongue-twistiness because even though you can find a battery for a HP pavilion dv6 that doesn't necessarily mean it's the RIGHT battery because something something something.
Eventually I grew tired of it and wandered away to play Kitty Powers Matchmaker. Which is an excellent game.
Anywho.
However, a vague nagging sense of guilt eventually got me back on task. So far today's accomplishments involved washing the sheets and doing the laundry. I've taken to folding underwear and socks (this is not the new part) and then putting them at the BOTTOM of the stack. Like some bizarre grocery store pushing the oldest items to the front of the shelf. I have yet to decide if this is stupid.
I also painted the mailbox. Easy enough: took it down, sanded the crap out of it, and spray painted it gold. A stupid bug decided to land on it as it was drying and attempting to remove the bug led to a smear... and the smear led to a terrible repair effort.. and now I`m trying to figure out if I should redo the entire thing. At the moment, because I`m feeling lazy, I will lean towards `rustic`and leave it be. Canada Post doesn`t even deliver to mailboxes anymore anyway (we have one of those community boxes at the end of the street) so really the only people who are going to see it are the mail boy (who usually just leaves things on the porch) and various religious groups trying to sell me on Jesus. Perhaps the flaws in my mailbox will convey to them the inevitable flaws in humanity and they`ll leave me alone.
Seems unlikely.
The other day I read an article about `living the pinterest way for a week` or something like that. It was.. strange. There`s a bizarre pushback to pinterest that`s been happening for a while, a sort of.. collective eyeroll. And while I do love me a pinterest fail, (google image search`pinterest nailed it` for some sheer joy) I think Pinterest is really a lovely thing.
So I`ve been thinking on it for a while, and I think I`ve figured it out: There`s a bizarre conceit in assuming that the reason you failed at something you copied off a pin is the fault of Pinterest.
Put another way: When I look up on youtube how to play a cover version of `Stay with Me` by Sam Smith on guitar, I don`t assume that I`m going to be able to play that song right off the bat. (I don`t assume I can play it at all, it`s got a Bm in it and my fingers refuse to remember how to play that fucking note.) Rather, I recognize the skill of the person who put up the video (duh. Why would they put it up otherwise?) and I bunker down to learn the damn thing, much to my bf's irritation. (Won't you... sttayyyyyy with me!!! because you're... allllll I need!)
So if you look at a pin about contouring - why on earth do you assume that you're going to get that right on the first try? It takes practice! Months and months of your sister saying 'do you have dirt on your face?' before you figure that shit out.
And I do think, honestly, that much of it harkens back to the idea of shitting on things women do. What makes up most of Pinterest? Spheres which, traditionally, have belonged to women. Stuff you cooked well, stuff you baked real pretty, things you made. Housewares. Makeup. Fashion.
It's easy enough to be dismissive of a pin as 'oh that's unrealistic' or 'oh, only some mommy housewife in Utah could waste their time on that' or 'who even has time for that?"
It's much harder to look at a pin and think 'wow, this person has perfected this art and that is really cool.'
And yah. You have to weigh things and say 'do I want to put the time in in order to become this good at this thing?" and the answer might be 'nah'. And that's cool too. But I really do feel like pinterest is a tool to inspire you. And also, that its a platform for people with skills that aren't always appreciated to shine. And that's pretty goddamn neat.
Now excuse me. There's a weird sharpie art mug thing that I want to look into.
Anywho. We had almost failed at the 'blog every day this week' challenge I had set for myself. Firstly because my spell check has gone on the fritz again (what even firefox?) and secondly becauase my laptop has decided it needs a new internal battery. This seemed a simple enough task. Except! It turns out that laptops have 3, possibly 4, batteries. There's the one you plug into the wall. Then there's the one that's attached to your laptop. Then there's a CMOS battery INSIDE your laptop. And finally there's a potentially mysterious battery which MIGHT be the internal battery or perhaps the internal battery is the one that's attached to the outside of your laptop. Having determined that, sort of, I then went looking for a new battery - this turns out to be a rabbit hole of Lewis Carroll tongue-twistiness because even though you can find a battery for a HP pavilion dv6 that doesn't necessarily mean it's the RIGHT battery because something something something.
Eventually I grew tired of it and wandered away to play Kitty Powers Matchmaker. Which is an excellent game.
Anywho.
However, a vague nagging sense of guilt eventually got me back on task. So far today's accomplishments involved washing the sheets and doing the laundry. I've taken to folding underwear and socks (this is not the new part) and then putting them at the BOTTOM of the stack. Like some bizarre grocery store pushing the oldest items to the front of the shelf. I have yet to decide if this is stupid.
I also painted the mailbox. Easy enough: took it down, sanded the crap out of it, and spray painted it gold. A stupid bug decided to land on it as it was drying and attempting to remove the bug led to a smear... and the smear led to a terrible repair effort.. and now I`m trying to figure out if I should redo the entire thing. At the moment, because I`m feeling lazy, I will lean towards `rustic`and leave it be. Canada Post doesn`t even deliver to mailboxes anymore anyway (we have one of those community boxes at the end of the street) so really the only people who are going to see it are the mail boy (who usually just leaves things on the porch) and various religious groups trying to sell me on Jesus. Perhaps the flaws in my mailbox will convey to them the inevitable flaws in humanity and they`ll leave me alone.
Seems unlikely.
The other day I read an article about `living the pinterest way for a week` or something like that. It was.. strange. There`s a bizarre pushback to pinterest that`s been happening for a while, a sort of.. collective eyeroll. And while I do love me a pinterest fail, (google image search`pinterest nailed it` for some sheer joy) I think Pinterest is really a lovely thing.
So I`ve been thinking on it for a while, and I think I`ve figured it out: There`s a bizarre conceit in assuming that the reason you failed at something you copied off a pin is the fault of Pinterest.
Put another way: When I look up on youtube how to play a cover version of `Stay with Me` by Sam Smith on guitar, I don`t assume that I`m going to be able to play that song right off the bat. (I don`t assume I can play it at all, it`s got a Bm in it and my fingers refuse to remember how to play that fucking note.) Rather, I recognize the skill of the person who put up the video (duh. Why would they put it up otherwise?) and I bunker down to learn the damn thing, much to my bf's irritation. (Won't you... sttayyyyyy with me!!! because you're... allllll I need!)
So if you look at a pin about contouring - why on earth do you assume that you're going to get that right on the first try? It takes practice! Months and months of your sister saying 'do you have dirt on your face?' before you figure that shit out.
And I do think, honestly, that much of it harkens back to the idea of shitting on things women do. What makes up most of Pinterest? Spheres which, traditionally, have belonged to women. Stuff you cooked well, stuff you baked real pretty, things you made. Housewares. Makeup. Fashion.
It's easy enough to be dismissive of a pin as 'oh that's unrealistic' or 'oh, only some mommy housewife in Utah could waste their time on that' or 'who even has time for that?"
It's much harder to look at a pin and think 'wow, this person has perfected this art and that is really cool.'
And yah. You have to weigh things and say 'do I want to put the time in in order to become this good at this thing?" and the answer might be 'nah'. And that's cool too. But I really do feel like pinterest is a tool to inspire you. And also, that its a platform for people with skills that aren't always appreciated to shine. And that's pretty goddamn neat.
Now excuse me. There's a weird sharpie art mug thing that I want to look into.