Mmm, gravy. Image from Pinterest. If you manage to find the actual recipe, please let me know!

So, because I don’t have enough real work on my to-do list, I finally caved and joined Pinterest today. Like I need another time-suck to add to email, facebook, and general web surfing to keep me from the real work.

How did this happen??

Well, I’ve been looking online for lots of decorating ideas recently (curtains are the mission du jour), and my “other bookmarks” tab is OUT OF CONTROL. I noticed that a lot of the links I was clicking in my search were taking me to someone’s Pinterest board (where I’d get distracted looking at all of their pins and forget why I was visiting in the first place). I thought if I joined Pinterest myself, I could create a board (or ten) of my own to keep track of all these fascinating decorating ideas in a more visual way, thereby conserving space in my “other bookmarks.”

Well, I’ve already run into problems. Mainly that I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing. I went through the tutorial when I signed up, and as an exercise I pinned a gravy recipe to a new board I called “Turkey Day.” When I go back to that board, and click on the gravy pin, it directs me to some other Pinterest board containing about a bajillion recipes. I’ve yet to find the gravy recipe. Having just a picture of gravy is not so helpful.

I subscribe to the philosophy that if all else fails, read, so next I clicked the Pinning 101 link in my welcome email. I fully expected to learn enough to finally get to that gravy recipe. Instead, I found out that Pinterest is intended to be less personal organizing tool, more social media site. Drat. I don’t care if other people see I’ve pinned a gravy recipe. I’m not trying to gain followers by pinning cute curtain ideas. Why can’t this just be a bulletin board where I can organize inspiration, without the whole world looking over my shoulder?

Now I’m not sure whether I should invest in the Pinterest for Dummies book on Amazon or just delete my account, print out the ideas that catch my eye on the web, and stuff them in a folder where they’ll never again see the light of day pin them to a real bulletin board. I figure either option burns up about the same number of precious moments. Moments I could have spent actually sewing some curtains. Or making gravy.