It's Just a Fantasy

So, my workplace consists of mostly men and I am on a team with all guys.  Ever since football season started (and I am counting the few weeks before with all the pre-season games) 80% of conversation topics rotate around what games were played the night/weekend before.  Also, the biggest topic is how my co-workers’ fantasy football teams are going.

To be honest, I don’t mind a (note the singular reference) football game, but once multiple games are played, I start losing interest.  But the guys I work with turn into excited kids.  It is my form of entertainment to hear them trash talk each other or get so angry if one of their players doesn’t play well.  Payton Manning seems to be a huge conversation point.  Hall of Fame or not…

I started thinking about it and tried to come up with a comparison to Fantasy Football that I could relate to.  It didn’t take me long before I realized Pinterest is my personal fantasy league. 

Let’s talk prep and time.  For a Fantasy Football, there is a huge amount of prep time.  You have to research all the players out there and build your dream team and decide what players will compliment each other.  Chances of you actually getting all your first choice draft picks are slim, so you must also plan accordingly with other team iterations. 

The prep time for Pinterest is limited.  You have to create your boards you want to fill and maybe set some random privacy settings.  If you are doing Pinterest through Facebook, please, PLEASE go onto your FB page and hide any posts from Pinterest.  It is a bit sad and irritating when people use Pinterest and start posting all these crazy recipes and they all show up on FB.  Hide this crap on FB, or be deleted from my friend list. 

For your Fantasy Football league, once your team is set, you must follow the players and be ready to make a trade if necessary.  You must also decide if certain players need to be benched that week or keep them in the rotation.  You have to keep track of the other teams in your league and make sure you continue to remain at the top or at least in contention. 

Pinterest posts require some monitoring as well.  Make sure you post to the correct category and don’t double post.  Make sure the links your post are actual links and not just a links to spam.  This can be tricky when you get into a pinning zone.  You start to trust total strangers hoping they to have done the research correctly.  Checking the link also allows you to verify the post or recipe is in English or at least in a measurable increments.  Thank you metric system, although you are easier to understand, it makes cooking in the United States a pain in the ass when I have to convert from ml to oz.

There isn’t really a time limit with Pinterest and you don’t have to have your pins in before 7pm on Tuesday, so that is nice.  Fantasy Football is a bit more cut-throat here.  Basically, you snooze, you lose so you must get your player, team or draft picks in on time. 

Fantasy Football ends at some point and someone wins.  There is a ranking and you can see where you ended up and make a mental note to improve next year.   Pinterest never really ends.  You find all these cool ideas and because you’ve spent all this time pinning, you don’t have time to actually do these ideas.  I have been known to get lost looking at everything possible to pin, then all of a sudden Jimmy Fallon is over and it is 1am.

So Pinterest is my time-suck and I shouldn’t really complain when someone else wants to spend as much (or more during the season) working on their fantasy league.  The biggest difference is that my interest could actually lead to something real, like brownies or making a beaded bracelet.  If I wasn’t so damn busy….