Cheyenne loves Pinterest and encourages me to spend time there, but I find Pinterest to be too big a distraction.  You could literally be on there for years on end without even beginning to hit a modest level of coverage on the millions of things pinned on folks’ boards.  In my estimation it is a black hole that I am doomed to be lost in for hours when I first casually click on one person’s pin.  I have to stay as far away from it as I can.  True, on some occasions I do land there, but when I do the little voice in my head shames me the whole time for the frivolity of it all.

Amazingly, Cheyenne is able to flit in and out of Pinterest with relative ease.  She does not get lost on there for hours.  I had to ponder why this might be.  I have concluded that it is generational.  When I go there I think I must gather all the information I need while there because I am of the generation that was raised with books and libraries and only met the Internet as an adult.  I grew up with the expectation that there are limits to the amount of data you can collect and once found it must be captured and saved as a hard copy for easy access.  This is stone-age thinking.

Cheyenne flies in and out of searches and sites with a level of ease and savvy that is far beyond anything I ever accomplished in a library.  She doesn’t get sucked into Pinterest for hours – she understands the system, the shortcuts, and the ability to relocate things in seconds (whether she “pins” them or not).  She is a gazelle across the information landscape, and I am a dinosaur.  Engaging with her on this level just makes me feel limited and archaic.

I have tried to re-frame the way I view the Internet and its use, particularly as it applies to sites like Pinterest or Facebook, but I have been unsuccessful thus far.  It seems like every time I master one thing, ten new things pop up.  It seems like I will nerve really catch up with the learning curve and lately I care less and less about whether I ever catch up.  I do love the conveniences technology has delivered, but I was not brought up with the level of filter necessary to use technology effectively.  Somehow, technology seems to rob me of time rather than save me time.  That doesn’t strike me as the way it should be.

I know what you are thinking – I am becoming one of those old fogies who laments “newfangled contraptions” and bemoans progress.  You may be right.  At the very least, I am acutely aware of my limitations and reflecting wistfully about a time when everything in the world was not at my fingertips.  Those were the days my friends. 😉