I might be one of the few people who still puts serious thought and consideration into choosing a background desktop image for my computer.
Maybe yours is a picture of you and your friends dressed to the nines about to take the town by storm. Maybe it’s a photo that brings you back to a special memory: A moment in time that you like to preserve in pixels and revisit whenever you open up your lap top. You can wall-paper the abs of your celebrity crush across all nine inches of screen, center a funny cat meme, or display corny yet awesome quotes from Pinterest right across your desktop.
Choosing your background image is like interior decorating for your computer and for someone like me, it can become a true platform of self expression.
I’m half kidding.
After conducting a thorough analysis of data gathered over the past six months, also known as looking back at my past three desktop background images, I’ve reached a few general conclusions about the desktop image and how it metaphorically fits into this graduating senior’s year so far. Maybe they can fit into yours, too.
Back in September, a four-finger swipe across the track pad of my Mac Book Pro would clear away all the open windows to reveal this:
It was September of my senior year of college and as graduation loomed closer, so did my ass-kicking from the real world. Each weekend spent out with my friends and each homework assignment submitted ten minutes after it was already due was throwing off the golden compass in charge of steering my life towards success (whatever that is). Four years of making the Dean’s List every semester, joining clubs, getting internships and building my resume was about to amount to something…I just didn’t know what. I had no direction because I wasn’t even sure where I wanted to go, but the ride sure was exhilarating.
I felt like my life was constantly in motion. Wake up, work out, run to class, meet up with friends, walk to class, be late for class, meet up with friends, cook dinner together, open a bottle of wine, crack up at nothing, go out, dance, stay out late on a school night, wake up and do it all over again. It was pedal-to-the-medal, windows down, hair-blowing-in-the-wind-living.
But the wind turned cold and I traded high wasted skirts for skinny jeans, open-toed heels for boots and replaced crop tops with sweaters. The crew and I rolled up the metaphorical windows to our metaphorical cars driving in the metaphorical fast lane of life because it was time for heated seats and window defrosters.
Time flew, I had fun, but now the unavoidable was upon me. The inescapable future and my impending doom, I mean graduation, was just on the horizon, and its presence sparked a disquieting internal struggle in the pit of my stomach.There was a stubborn piece of me that didn’t want to move forward at all, but rather keep things just the way they were.
Then there was the part of me tempted by the lure of the future, with its exhilarating rush and inspiring newness. The idea of not knowing, its mystery, its uncertainty was an undeniable invitation for me to move forward.
So I changed my desktop background.
Check back next week for part 2 of the Desktop Image Analysis.