I admit I’ve gotten a little tired of the Pinterest and Instagram world, in which everyone is suddenly looking and doing and saying the same adorable things. This is not to say I don’t appreciate adorable things/people/ideas when I see them. I do, always. I’m just starting to get confused about motives….and why we’re all becoming the same creative, interesting, unique people.
You see, there are genuinely fascinating people who don’t have blogs, Facebook pages, Pinterest accounts, and definitely not Instagram accounts. Obviously, I’m not one of these people because I do have a blog and a Facebook (+ I may or may not have tried a Pinterest account that I checked every four months or so.) This is not to say that people who have these things are not genuinely fascinating people. Of course not–that would be offensive to myself. This is to say, though, that some people don’t care about figuring out what other people are doing, and they definitely don’t care about whether or not anyone else knows/cares about what they do. These people are particularly fascinating to me.
Which is why I am going to tell you a little bit about my friend Maria who has lived in the shadows with her fascinatingness. Some things:
*She’s got bees. She and her husband randomly decided to be bee keepers about a year ago. They’re more into bees for honey than wax or anything else, but Maria’s not one to not try wax.
*She speaks Ukrainian and Russian fluently. She also spent a year studying Latin, which she’s kinda forgotten. But whatev.
*She and her husband are buying a plot of land in some obscure place called Hooper in Utah.
(Maria loves land.)
*She and her husband went to Williamsberg, Virginia for their honeymoon. They wanted, and I quote, “to learn about colonial life.” Fascinating!
*A couple weeks ago, Maria and her husband made a Fire Piston. This is how she explained it:
“You get a copper tube. You stick a cap on it so it’s air tight. You get a wooden dowel [which is a stick, for those of you who didn’t know, like me] and put a washer and some char cloth on it. Then you ram the dowel into the copper tube with enough force that there is enough air pressure that it combusts.”
When I asked her why they did this–Is your husband a science person or something?— she said, “Because we can.” Fascinating!
You can try pinteresting Maria. You can try building a Fire Piston or keeping bees or learning Latin and then forgetting it. I hope you genuinely enjoy it. Just remember that this Maria is the real Maria and you can’t really fake being the real Maria.
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Maria does have a Facebook account. (However, she rarely checks it. We’re all trying to get her to check it more.)
Womormonings 
She’s pretty cool.
Agreed. Maria is awesome.
I love this. Maria sounds AMAZING. I’d love to meet her.
I’ve been having very similar thoughts, too, recently. About FB, blogs, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. Like you, I could never call myself a social media ascetic because I DO use these mediums (media? I can never freaking remember) and I DO enjoy using them. But, like you, I have felt myself becoming quite jaded. Particularly with blogs, Instagram, and Pinterest. I’ll always use FB and Twitter as my outlets for political discussions with friends. I’m really lucky to have some highly analytical friends who I’ve learned a LOT from over the years. But blog, Instagram, and Pinterest reap no tangible benefits for me–other than to make me feel bad because I can make/cook/do that.
I think it’s important to approach your social media use critically–both in what you consume and what you put out there. Anyway, I’m going off on a crazy tangent. The point is I AGREE WITH YOU. hahaha
I think blogging, instagramming, pinteresting can be beneficial in terms of introducing us to new ideas/ways of doing/being. I think there’s a line, though, between genuine interest and performance. Of course, we’re all at some point performing and we’re constantly evolving and developing interests, which I think is a good thing. I guess the fact that so many of us are evolving similarly makes me feel weird/hesitant.
You forgot to mention that in addition to being particularly cool, Maria is also mind-bogglingly smart.
Oh yeah. That too . . . and finished with her thesis.
I love this. Sometimes this is all I can write to you posts. Forgive me.
meaning, i wish i could be wittier because the post deserves it. but, by the time i get to the end i’m only thinking about how much i love all the ideas inside it.
Great post. I had never even read a blog until 3 months ago. I was a bit frustrated with my life, and I typed out how I was feeling in an effort to make myself feel better and clearly articulate myself to my husband. It felt really good, so I just kept going…
I have been wondering lately if the very idea of my blog is a bit self indulgent. And indeed, whether the genuine thrill I get when I see that someone has read, liked, commented or followed me is a bit over the top. I have also become rather addicted to reading other peoples’ blogs (especially the ones that make me laugh).The laundry pile has become a casualty, but I find it so cathartic that I know I must continue…
I like your friend Maria – she sounds wacky and interesting and clever. And brave. Bees and Fire Pistons? Gutsy…
Hahaha, yes self-indulgent. But I think reading other people’s stories is, like you said cathartic, as well as instructive. I never get tired of learning more about what it means to live a human life. Consider it the best education :)
I was just discussing the whole Pinterest-tweet-Facebook-instagram “thing” today. Everybody wants to be associated with a new or winning thing. Fads of the time. Not bad to follow a fad, but being completely unique is difficult and sometimes a lonely road.
Interesting. Very difficult, and yes lonely. Don’t you find it odd that many of us try so hard to connect/identify with others and yet, at the same time, try to separate ourselves so that we remain unique? This is so true of myself at times. Perhaps I’ll blame it on the American “individual”/”community” dualism.