Nina In New York: The Pinterest Effect

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

This world is filled with things I want to love. Things which everyone I know and respect unanimously love. Things which appear in tandem with other things I genuinely love. And yet, try as I might, I simply cannot figure out how to appreciate them. And I know I'm wrong, and it's just a darn shame. To name a few: roasted red peppers. The Big Bang Theory. Anything having anything to do with anything J.R.R. Tolkien wrote. The beach. Branzino. Channing Tatum's sexy sexiness. Cumin (the word, the flavor). YA fiction. The Internet (it's complicated). Le Bernardin (where is le food?). Green juice. Sports (watching, playing). Wedge boots. Flossing. Driving a car. Video games. Gambling.

But of all of these many things which I so incorrectly hate, Pinterest may be number one. Not necessarily because I hate it the most (although I do hate it quite a bit), but because of how wrong I clearly am.

This is a website that was essentially created for me. I'm a woman (√), a mother of a small child (√√), and I've yet to purchase and furnish a home (√√√). I should be trolling the site hours a day, finding creative projects that keep my toddler busy and engaged using only the closet full of craft supply staples any decent SAHM would have in her home. I should be tapping away every evening, planning the next day's menu of wholesome, whole food, home cooked meals which will nourish my baby's body and mind and make her go, "MMMMMM!" I should be picking out color schemes and learning how to DIY my own headboard and reading inspirational quotes about women and real beauty and how having it all is realizing you already had it or nothing is everything or whatever or some junk. I ought to be finding ingenious ways to repurpose everyday items to clean my washing machine, organize my charging cables by color and size, and banish mildew from my household for all eternity.

Do I really need to explain why the whole thing makes me feel like an inadequate, pathetic, rage-filled failure?

I'll tell you what my real life Pinterest board looks like. My Pinterest board consists of a phone number for a cleaning woman and a list of lunch ideas like, "give your child as many globs of peanut butter off the tip of a butter knife as she'll take, because heaven only knows when she'll agree to eat anything but crackers again." I also pinned a photo of an unfurnished room with nothing on the walls but a thousand mismatched, frantic question marks, and also a coupon for chicken tenders. My favorite pin is the one that links to Sesame Street episodes on my iPad, and I also can't wait to try out some of the really cool ideas I pinned for toddler craft projects like, "paper and crayons," "paper and stickers," and "ripped up, mostly clean napkin."

It's not like I don't wish I could be the person who is good enough at her life that she can make good use of the Pinterest platform. I do. It's too late. I'm not good enough. I'll never be good enough to see pages of photos of Ikea play kitchens which people "jazzed up" with their own professional-quality DIY touches without being filled with a deep, white-hot, shame-flavored fury. I will never do anything with felt, but I'm learning to be okay with that. I'm not sure I'll ever find the inner strength to figure out how to eat clean. And no matter how much I pray, I will never be as wise or evolved as anyone out there who can draw anything positive from anything that is labeled as "inspirational." It all makes me sick. I'm sick with self-loathing and jealousy and indignation. I'm not worthy. I hate them for making me hate myself when all I want to do is feel unreasonably proud for successfully cooking a bi-monthly pot of homemade macaroni and cheese. I am not for this world. It's not them, it's me.

(But it's a little bit them. I hate them so much.)

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!