Sort of Pinteresting

I used to go to Pinterest to get inspired, to find new recipes, to find new ideas.

I guess that's still why I go there, but lately I've been disappointed. More and more often I come away more depressed than inspired, more overwhelmed and even angry.

Everything on Pinterest is just someone's idea, just something someone saw somewhere and didn't want to forget. I understand it's not meant to be a prescription for how I live. But somehow, seeing that people I know are putting these things on their online to-do lists triggers something in my subconscious. I begin to wonder if I am somehow lacking.

Then I immediately get really angry, upset at myself for holding myself to some abstract standard of what a woman and mother and homemaker and career woman should be. I know in my heart when I'm doing well, when my best efforts are good enough. But then I see things on Pinterest like this:

 

And I think, "So now I have to take less than ten minutes to teach my daughter important life skills?"

Then I see this:

 

And I think, "Oh, no! Lyla's already too old for that one." 

Then I mentally shake myself and say, "No, Lyla is fine. This is not what you have to do or even what everyone else does. Lyla will learn to swim like a normal kid, at swimming lessons, and she will love it."

What follows is the inevitable juxtaposition of side-by-side posts. There's one about toning your abs next to one with a deliciously sinful dessert. A post with ideas for elaborate parties next to a post about simplifying your life. Seeing those things next to each other makes me somehow think I can have it both ways, but I know I can't. 

When I look at these things, I constantly remind myself: This isn't real. I must discover my own reality.

The reality is that end of the day I close my computer and look at my happy, well-adjusted daughter who has somehow become that way in spite of me. She can't swim yet, and it will probably take me more than five minutes to teach her to tie her shoes. My house isn't huge and pristine like the homes I see on the screen, but it is clean.

And that's okay.

Amen.