I discovered Pinterest a few weeks ago. It’s a website, kind of like tumblr, but with more pretty pictures per capita and without all the words muddying up my feed.
I’ve got a bunch of virtual boards, and I virtually pin pictures to those boards of things that catch my eye. The idea is to go back to it later and DIY a shoe rack or bake a weird cake, but I never do, so it’s virtually pointless.
I spend a lot of my Pinterest time pinning photos of homes with beautiful furniture, plush pillows and interesting wall hangings. It’s my “dream home” board—full of all the little details I hope to one day incorporate into my New England Colonial.
But the daydreaming comes with a dose of anxiety, especially in a post-2008 recessionista world. Four years later, four months from graduation, and I’m not sure what to make of it all. My short-term and long-term plans include finding a job… and that’s about it.
No one is going to hand me a great job, or piles of money. In the short term I expect to work really, really hard until that distant day when it starts to pay off. But I’m not sure what to dare expect in the long term, either. Buying a house someday always seemed like a given when I was younger—it’s what my parents did, what their parents did, and so on. But at this point, it feels like something out of a really great sci-fi movie—something super cool that doesn’t make sense when you un-suspend disbelief.
I’ve made peace with my student loan debt, and the challenges I’ll face finding a job. It’s part of the process. But I’m a little antsy about what happens five years, eight years, 10 years from now.
And it’s not really about a house. A house is a thing—a big thing, but a thing nonetheless. Anxiety over whether I’ll get my very own early Victorian when I’m more than comfortable, and financially able to put a rented roof over my head deserves one of those “first world problems” hashtags on Twitter.
It’s more the ideas it represents—stability, security, a yardstick by which to measure whether I’m a bona fide adult. Pinning pictures is a fine diversion, but security and stability may need a redesign. Old yardsticks may not measure up any more, but ideals can change, and reality could end up better than the daydream anyway, because it’s real.
Email: kmsheehan@mail.usf.edu
