May You Lead a Pinteresting Life

There's been a lot of discussion lately about how social media is not quite accurate in how it portrays people's lives.

The general thesis makes sense. Especially on places like Facebook and Pinterest and boutique blogs, we see people's accomplishments; with women and the "New Domesticity"movement, we especially see some rather intimidating creative projects. You know what I mean:
- "Check out the new curtains I made out of my grandmother's wedding dress"
- "Here's a picture of the 18 kinds of varied jams and jellies I made today"
- "Here's the entirely new organic cotton wardrobe I sewed for my daughter for back to school"
- "A picture of our dinner — fresh baked bread and goat cheese I made from our neighbor's new goat Daisy"
-  "Our perfect vacation retreat in the mountains of Costa Rica"

These posts are always beautiful, and inspiring, and kind of intimidating. I know this for a fact, because I often have similar posts.

Because why wouldn't you? You do all this work on something, and you are proud of it and want to share it! And let's face it, it's a lot more interesting than posting pictures of "Here's the Kraft mac-and-cheese I fed my kid for dinner," or "See how much laundry we have to do tonight?" I mean, really, why would you chronicle things like that?

I had heard about the false impressions that these posts may give, but I didn't really think about it and my role with it until recently, when someone I am close to made a comment to my husband about our recent activities, based on something he had posted. Patrick explained earnestly "That's my online persona! That's not real life! If you want to know what's really going on, ask me."

So here's my confession. Of course I am going to post things I am proud of (and I didn't even put up a picture of the awesome chocolate chip/chia seed/banana bread that Patrick just made!) But in case you don't know, my real life is a lot more full of laundry/mac-and-cheese/general daily FAIL than any of my posts would begin to touch on. In fact, right now, there's a lot of struggle to it.

So allow me my triumphs, but please don't be scared by them! And maybe join me in showing me exactly what you're doing, even if it's only comparing pictures of our need-to-be-cleaned refrigerators.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Well said, Bethany! Lee

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