The Uses of Multi-Color Post-It Notes & Pinterest

Summer Stammely

According to the algorithm of Pinterest, at 8:57 pm on a Thursday, I should,
- Make felt ornaments,
- Paint my nails like a butterfly,
- Listen to Woody Guthrie songs (or just read sections of lyrics laid against nature images)
- Find a new home screen background, for the third time today,
- Embroider the solar system onto a canvas.

Sometimes I imagine the Pinterest feed as a kind of oracle, one that speaks only in “aesthetic”commands and aspirational hobbies. It never asks if I have the time, or the money, or the emotional bandwidth required to embroider a solar system. It simply assumes I am always ready for reinvention, as if reinvention is a craft project I can complete before bed. There’s an entire aesthetic industrial complex behind it: millions of images whispering that life is better with coordinated pajamas, curated bookshelves, dyed wool, perfect handwriting. I wonder what it would look like if the algorithm showed me something unedited, something real.

I have sixty-one pieces of art hung on my bedroom walls, and forty-seven post-it notes of varying size and shape and color. My post it notes are kept in a secluded corner of my bedroom–behind my door, you will only see them when you are shut in.

Post it notes are a forgotten art form that stems from the chaos of a brain.
Reminders, Lists, Organization, Brainstorming, etc.

I have sections of post-it notes. In an un-neat line of pale yellow is my “to-do list” that rarely gets done.

The glow of the screen blends with the colors of my Post-its until it’s hard to tell where my own ideas end and the algorithms begin. Maybe that’s the point: a quiet, pastel takeover.

According to the algorithm of Pinterest, at 9:09 pm on a Thursday, I should,
- Rewatch 2019's Little Women,
- Learn Pig Latin,
- Get a new set of pajamas, (preferably with roses and little pink bows)
- Read, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, again,
- Buy my cat a halloween costume for next year.

My wall of Post-its forms its own topography—ridges of half-finished thoughts, valleys where I stopped caring, mountains of obligations I never climbed. Unfinished plot lines of a book I haven’t finished writing, color coordinated with their imaginary characters. It is mostly a mess. Pinterest, meanwhile, offers oceans. Endless ones. A tide of suggestions that never turn into action.

Every new idea becomes a “should,” and every “should” becomes a tiny debt I owe the imaginary person Pinterest believes I could be. My Post-it notes are real; Pinterest is debt.

According to the algorithm of Pinterest, at 9:43 pm on a Thursday, I should,
- Begin speaking only in Oscar Wilde quotes,
- Paint Horse Shoes, (i’ve done this one before)
- Collect Tea Cups, (For decoration only)
- Bake Gingerbread Cookies
- Travel to the Swiss Alps

Sometimes I think about ignoring the algorithm entirely. Closing Pinterest, peeling down every Post-it, letting the walls go bare. But then what? Who am I without the little colorful squares telling me what I once wanted?

What is the world without a mess of unfinished thoughts, of uncompleted crafts, inspirational quotes that get saved but never used?

Maybe the problem is that everything online must be curated. Even chaos has to look intentional, messy buns arranged, scattered books artfully placed, teacups collected but never chipped. Pinterest doesn’t allow for the kind of disorder that lives in real bedrooms, in real minds. Its curation is tyrannical in nature.

According to the algorithm of Pinterest, at 10:22 pm on a Thursday, I should,
- Online Shop,
- Re-paint my bedroom walls a hunter green
- Scroll Zillow for houses, on Cape Cod, (I cannot afford one, most people cannot)
- Make a doll house
- Eat walking tacos

Pinterest dreams in polished palettes.
Post-it notes dream in scattered fragments.
Somewhere between the two, I keep trying to stitch together a version of myself that feels real.
Maybe that’s why I keep the Post-its. They don’t care if I complete anything. They don’t demand perfection. They just hold whatever pieces of me I give them. There's comfort in these small paper squares.