Ah, Pinterest. You are so captivating; but what I have begun to recognize is that you are indeed my captor.
The idea of Pinterest on the surface is well-meaning. Let us suggest to you a wide variety of inspiration and content tailored to your interests. Great!
The more insidious side of Pinterest I have come to know as this: let us show you all the ways in which you are “less than” by showing what you are not accomplishing in your current life. If I could capture the platform of Pinterest it would be a mirror shot of a mom with 6 pack abs carrying a newborn baby with a green smoothie in hand with her newest home organization project executed flawlessly in the background.
When I have found myself restless, bored, or even overwhelmed, I have turned to scrolling my Pinterest feed. It has become habitual, a reflex. I will scroll and eventually find something to pin to one of my boards. Sometimes the pin is an inspirational quote, or delightful piece of art I am admiring, but much more often it has been a project to emulate or a proposal of “how-to” something.
Now, if you’re seeking specific guidance on how to do a certain thing, this is all well and good. The problem I have run into is that Pinterest keeps creating a never-ending list of projects in my life that I can never accomplish and so the bar of what I must achieve in my life is never cleared.
What follows is typically a sense of comparison anxiety in that I feel lacking in some area of my life because I have not done X task or project. This cycle is grating my worth, subjecting me to these project-sized portions of what constitutes having value.
On the brink of motherhood, my understanding is that this cycle can only worsen as I add in a new realm of comparison to my life with parenthood. I am fighting to be mindful; to remember that my worth should not be equated to how much productivity I can squeeze out of the pores of my being.
I don’t mean to hate on Pinterest specifically. Objectively I think it’s a great tool. Really any social media platform could be substituted here and you’d get the same idea. The issue I continue to run into is that these sites create a never-ending tally of “what to do” and my internal dialogue confuses this with “how to be.”
There aren’t enough projects in the world to satiate impossible standards for self-worth.
I must create my own standard of being, of contentment. I still find myself scrolling, but lately my scrolling has been accompanied by an honest check-in with myself about how I feel and how I am looking to feel.
There is a time and place for doing. Right now I can just be,
and that is enough.