For professional reasons – and I am really not making this up – it’s become necessary for me to get my hands dirty on Pinterest.  It’s a mixed blessing.  I have a suspicion that the more actively we reinforce our role as onlookers, flagging and highlighting images others make and promote, the more we blunt the edge of our own unique voice.  But beauty can also make us hungry to create, and that is a good thing.

One thing I discovered on Pinterest is that, amidst the iterations of billowing butterflies and seraphic faces, my pictures would be the only pictures like mine.  Another’s vision of blooming dogwoods and violets can inspire me to look for my own, but only I can find this particular garden hiding in the clouds.