customizing your life
I recently read a post about making your life cuter and I've also watched videos about the positive effects of customizing your life, which inspired this post.
It's about the general importance of self-expression and controlling your experience within your means. Not just aesthetically (though that is a major point in the stuff I linked, and most easily shown), but generally making things work for you, around your needs, your likes, and being true to yourself. Design things how you want them to work or look, whether that is putting stickers on it, altering clothing, or going into the settings of stuff, modding your devices, and more.
The point is to make things look visually appealing to you, make it a joy to interact with for you. Personalize your bags, your belts, your clothes; adorn yourself with whatever you see fit and that is suitable for the things you want to do. Embroider something into it, if you like. Make custom clothes for your plushies. Buy that thing in your favorite color instead of just the default white/gray/black.
I used to be a big fan of keeping everything rather neutral and sterile and basically mint condition, and I am still not a fan of wearing clothes that have something written on it (like brand names or random sentences/cities/universities), but I've branched out to allowing more decoration, more color into my life and destroying the virgin look of some of my items.
Here's what my newest laptop looks like:
This is what my old laptop looks like:
Obviously, I buy a lot of stickers too for my notebook as well, and I also changed the shell of my Steam Deck for a gradient translucent one.
Here's my most customized bag so (in terms of pins and all; I have some plushies on others, too):
I also used to do a fair amount of Desktop ricing, which means customizing a lot about how your OS interface looks; not just the background, but the border of the windows and more. I made a zine entry for a now-cancelled zine about this customization and encouraging going as far as you can in the settings to make your device feel like yours.
There's small details as well that make a bigger difference to me than you might think. As soon as I knew I would have to inject myself with medicine every two weeks, I made an effort to find ways to make it a bit nicer for myself, even if just aesthetically. Normal bandaids are pretty boring, if not ugly, so why not aim for some visually appealing ones after all that pain? So I bought heart bandaids instead, and since a few days now, I also have Cinnamoroll bandaids. Put one on today for the first time and looking forward to that made the injection easier to bear.
I have also sewn my own Switch bag in the past, or my own apron, and embroidered things onto them:
I sadly don't get to sew enough; I hate measuring and drawing on the fabric, I only love the actual sewing on the machine (when the lower thread complies...). But I have so many cool ideas for clothing I wanna wear, especially techwear-inspired clothing. I have some small crystals I'd love to electroplate and turn into wearable jewelry, especially rings. I want to dissect old broken tech and use parts of it for jewelry or to adorn clothing (removable, though, for washing), as well. I hope I'll blog about that one day :)
The buns I wear in my hair fairly often again kind of also fit this. I used to stop wearing them for quite a while, but I reintroduced it, especially because the wigs make it easier to do that. They might look weird to others, and they're not considered normal, proper round buns, but I like them. Similarly, I enjoyed wearing fake antlers on my wedding day, and I am working up the courage to wear them at other times as well, because I enjoy them. I have also bought a cute big bow clip yesterday.
Of course, I also experiment with my nails:
Being outside and seeing other people could be a lot more interesting and fun if everyone could wear what they really wanted to, even if it was colorful or weird. I know I love seeing someone with a very colorful or unique outfit in the sea of gray. I also own a bright pink fuzzy jacket, and I have 2m of fake fur fabric waiting to be sewn into a jacket.
You don't have to make your life more aesthetically pleasing to others, or something to post about, or chase trend after trend, or spend a lot of money; that is not the point. You can do a lot of things for free or cheap that make your life and the things you own and the space you live in feel more fun and more like you, and design aspects of yourself like a character creator. :) And you don't always have to wait around for the ideal item to be available to buy anywhere... chances are, your own creation, even if not like the perfect item you could buy, will mean more to you and be more sentimental than the approximation of it that AliExpress offers.
Here's my pottery, intended to hold some of my jewelry. I made the ring holder too big and it doesn't hold a single ring, and a lot of the monstera leaf broke off in the oven. Still nice, because I made it and I remember how it was to create it.
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Published 29 Aug, 2025