I'm back.

I thought I should check in to see how you all are doing. Are you faring well without me?

I'm terribly sorry it's been so long. You see, what happened is that I went on a search... on the web...

Typically, as searches go, I search, I find, I'm satisfied - and then I get on with life. But a few weeks back, I searched for something and got completely sucked into the quagmire called Pinterest.

I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest. I hate that I do it. I hate that I spend so much time doing it. I hate when someone walks in on me when I'm doing it. But, sadly, on the opposite end of the spectrum... have you seen how much cool stuff is on Pinterest?

Well, have you?

It's a female's delight. A wonderful place full of colorful, fantastical pictures - of everything you could imagine; everything you could ever desire is on Pinterest. I have boards, lots and lots of boards, full of recipes, hair styles, shoes, shoes, outfits, make-up tricks, laundry detergest, did I mention shoes yet?

Now you must understand that over the past few weeks, I've had several wonderful ideas as to what I can write about. I've even stolen a few moments here and there to actually write down some of my thoughts. But when I sit down to my keyboard, I see that lovely little icon on my favorites bar that beckons to me every day - sometimes twice a day. And I just can't help myself. I scroll my cursor over the favorites bar, like I'm running my index finger over the spines of books on a library shelf, savoring the feeling of the leather, remembering what I like best about each story. Then, it happens. My cursor comes to rest over the icon. The cream-colored box appears that says "Pinterest/Home http://pinterest.com/" and I just can't help myself. I click twice to open up the login page and I'm lost for at least an hour.

Now, in reality, of course I see that this is a huge waste of my time. There are just so, so many other things that I could and certainly should be doing. This is where the hate part comes in. Because I know that, unless I've won the lotto recently, I can't afford to do most of these things (even though the $30 home-made laundry detergent for a year sounded too good to be true). I hate that I could have written something entertaining for my followers. I hate that I should have done some more editing on my book and I piddled the time away. And now, having spent the best part of an evening 'pinning' various things to my boards, I find myself too tired to even try to be creative. I've made the list of ingredients for baked French toast, homemade laundry soap, black tea hair rinse, glossy lip balm... and I've lost them all in the out of control pile of stuff that has continued to build up on top of my desk while I sit oblivious to everything around me and continue to pin.

Well I've made some decisions. Considering that I've been blogging for over two years now (granted, not consistently), and also considering my dear, faithful story that I've worked on for the past 17 months, I've decided to not touch Pinterest anymore - ever again. Maybe I could handle it if I only log in after I've worked on my writing first. But I won't log in just to see what's new. I might log in to get that laundry soap recipe. And I might log in to find that hair cut that I wanted to show my stylist....