So, sometime earlier this year the Company held what we call a regular equipment upgrade/reshuffle, and I found myself the inheritor of my colleague's reformatted laptop.
Not that it's a big deal- Company policy assigns gear on an as-needs basis according to the tasks required of the employee, and what with it not being hierarchy-driven, a junior employee might actually get a newer (faster) piece of gear (with better graphic cards) compared to, say, their senior colleagues from another department.
I didn't mind that the gear was inherited.
It's Company policy, which I won't argue.
But I did mind, however, the uniformity- as in, it wasn't me to leave it looking like it could belong to just about anybody in the Company- so I decided to customize it.
It turned out to be a bigger challenge than I thought.
Because whilst the manner of things was to be 'as professional as possible', I was using this for both professional, and personal purposes, and given one who (strives) to integrate both (as much as possible) together in her life, I wasn't contented to leave my laptop looking boring aka professional.
It needed shapes.
It needed color.
And I wanted it to display a bit of my quirks and my personality as well
There was an idea of getting die-cut stickers from the booths in some of the shopping malls, but they turned out to be too pop-ish and too colorful for (upper management) me, plus therewas no time to rummage through the piles, so I threw that idea away, and eventually came to this.
Doesn't look too bad, does it?
It's not as fun as some of the millennial laptops are, but it doesn't look as severe as some of the work laptops are, either.
It takes quite a bit of balance, I assure you, to figure out what it is that suits the work you do, and what it is that suits the person that is you.
That being said, first thing up, of course, was the SkinCalories label.
I knew I wanted that.
Subsequently, everything else, including the border of the label itself, came after.
Originally I was going to put only the square shaped mood stickers (from Daiso) around the label, but then afterwards I decided that it needed a bit more shape, so out came the so calming but so hard to find chill-looking blue stickers that were a precise reflection of my mood at the start of this year.
We're in June right now.
But it's still my mood.
Will it continue to be my mood still?
I don't know- maybe, maybe not- but after all this while, there is indeed a part of me that yearns for the serenity of space, the calmness of mind, and the solitude that mood images like these can bring.
Putting contemplation aside, I actually love how it looks.
Not just because SkinCalories means more than just a skincare company (and brand) to me, not just because I've made the colors of purple, lavender and lilac signature, but also because the images are mature enough that bring out a smile from the serenity-loving soul in me.