I may hate Pinterest

I’ve started following a few teacher’s boards on Pinterest. It may be the most demoralizing thing I’ve done in my life.

First, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, these women are called to be teachers. They love children. They understand children. They are strangely creative.

I click through their pins and see crafts like making geodes out of egg shells, sensory play ideas, preschool songbooks, ideas for thematic units on monsters, vowels, and weather. The sheer number of incredible ideas… well, it’s intimidating.

In the midst of seeing the ideas, something rears up inside of me and starts getting mad. I mean, how dare they set the bar so high?! Don’t they know that means the mere mortals doing their best to teach their kids to read, write, add, and subtract at home while also folding laundry, cleaning toilets, cooking meals, and trying not to be a wicked beast by bedtime are watching these pins slide across Pinterest and plotting out revenge???

Perhaps you will find a voodoo doll made of macaroni noodles, colored with edible finger paints a warning to give us a break.

To be fair, I absolutely love these ideas until I get overwhelmed by them. I have to collect my thoughts, breathe deeply, and reassure myself that for every Pinterest-worthy idea there are a dozen of ideas that didn’t come with exclamation points and a beautiful photo of smiling children displaying their scale version of the Eiffel Tower constructed with marshmallows and toothpicks.

Do you get idea-envy when you look at Pinterest? Read status updates on Facebook? If you do, how do you conquer it?