{im}perfectly PINTERESTing

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life...have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."                                                    - Steve Jobs

I turned 50 last October, and as you know, shortly after, I lost my youngest brother to brain cancer. Like a carefree bird at full speed, I flew smack into the cold glass of reality - a window of hope having just slammed shut. No longer an esoteric thought, I finally saw and felt "Life's brief candle" flickering.

Over the decades, I've become complacent. It's easy to do, you know. So many of us let the passions and dreams of youth slip out of our fingers and sail away behind us. We settle down and settle in. We aspire to fit the mold of the perfect mother or father - the perfect bread winner, spouse, or lover. We deplete our resources and ourselves trying to meet up to standards set by the invisible "them".

In the last several years, the internet has become a powerful resource in my never-ending quest for perfection. Enter Pinterest: my internet porn and, at times, self-esteem leech.

Millions of "hacks" using baking soda, vinegar, and toothpaste for all kinds of household fixeroos. Pictures of pristine, cozy kitchens in white with turquoise tools and stainless appliances. Tutorials for sexy hair, age-reversing make-up, wardrobe tweaks, and exercise tips promising transformation from frowning frump to 21st Century, June Cleaver-Jane Mansfield Fox. A flicker of hope for the weary working woman or stay at home mom who tries to be everything to everyone, but ends up exhausted and worn.

Don't get me wrong, Pinterest's a wonderful, powerful tool. An endless depot of collective ideas and inspiration, it can help us make life easier, richer, and more fun. In the hands of an easily-depressed, attention-impaired, 24-hour-a-day-stimulus-seeking addict like me, though, it can have the reverse effect.

Contrary to popular belief (ha-ha)...I'm not perfect. While this fuels my initiative and inspires my goal-setting, it's also led to procrastination, and pushed me over the edge more than once into the Vortex. Take blogging, for instance. Even though I've been blogging for almost five years now, in the last two, I've poured over countless "Pins" listing tips for blogging success. Always afraid of failure, though, I've been waiting for the perfect time to dive back in - waiting to get the new blog website up and running and, well, perfect. Waiting to craft the perfect masthead and design, and to outline a precise map of topics before continuing where I left off.

Now on the cusp of...gulp...51, Life's brief candle may indeed be slowly waning, but damn it, I've decided I'm going to crackle, blaze, and roar before I'm through! I'm ditching the self-repression of Them-pleasing and freeing the bound and gagged, long-lost ME. I'm going to do what I love - get back to blogging, rekindle old fires, and explore much, much more! (It's not called Pink Hi-Top ADVENTURES for nothing, you know.)

Yes, the new website will come; and yes, I'll checkout Pinterest, etc. for creative and technical ideas to get there. In the meantime, however, I'm back and I'll give you the best I've got.

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12/17/2017
Reading back over this and other posts just now, I noticed something. When I have a problem or emotional crisis, and I blog about it, somewhere in the last two paragraphs I have an epiphany. My outlook does a 180, hope returns, and I'm charged enough to get back on the path.

ANTI-DEPRESSION TOOL: If your outlook is bleak right now, write it out, draw it out, GET IT OUT of your head and onto paper (or screen). 

[Now there's a reason to start blogging again...and, oh crap! I already said, "I'm back..." I better get out of this post and into a new one. NOW!]