I actually feel really bad about telling you about Pinterest because if you are not currently using Pinterest, I’ve maybe just ruined your productivity for forever. So yeah, I feel really bad about that.

But, on the other hand, if you are anything like me and tend to horde inspirational things on the internet like one of those people who can’t bring themselves to throw away plastic butter containers or cups from Burger King, then you’re going to go a little crazy over Pinterest. Like I did.

Pinterest is sort of like a virtual cork board. Remember in high school when you cut out faces of cute boys, cute hair styles, make up tips from magazines and you thumb tacked them along side pictures of your best friends on an ever growing wall of teenage memorabilia in your bedroom? It’s just like that but for the internet.

Pinterest is really beautiful. The stuff that gets posted are pictures of course, and people really have an eye for beautiful things. If I go anywhere near the Everything list of what’s been posted in the last couple of minutes, I can go into eyeball overstimulation. Pinterest teaches us that there are a lot of very, very talented people in the world.

Ok, so, you have to request membership which took me like 2 days to get. Once they approve your account, you get to start setting up bulletin boards that you will then filter your Pinning finds into, or you can create those boards as you go (which is more or less what I did.)

Then begins the hunt to PIN ALL THINGS.

I have a board for Quotes, Health and Food, Health and Fitness, Party Ideas, Fairy Tales, Inspirational Photography, Costumes, Places, Steam & Diesel, Art, and I don’t know, a million other categories. I have a serious Pinterest habit.

You get to add this little Pin It button to your menu bar and whenever you come across a website with something you want to pin, you click Pin It and all the possible pins pop up. You choose the one you want, categorize it, add a description if you wish, and then pin. You can also send it to Twitter if you want to share your find. What’s nice then is that your pin will retain the original source URL. VERY handy when you want to give credit where credit is due. You can also Repin something someone else has already Pinned, and you can Like things someone else has already pinned. You can subscribe to other people’s boards too.

Most of my boards are inspirational for writing, but not all.

Here’s a link to my Pinterest account if you’d like to check it out, and below you can see some screenshots of my favorite pins.

http://pinterest.com/sommerleigh/

BE WARNED. I’ve lost whole nights to trolling around Pinterest, repinning with absolute delightful abandon. I take no responsibility for whatever work you don’t get done.