The Space That Reflects Who I’m Becoming

There is a small corner in my home that has quietly watched me change. It’s not an empty shelf, a missing chair, or a hole in the wall where something once mattered and then disappeared. The space in the small corner still holds the same item it held since 2 years ago, my laptop.

And if I’m being honest, my laptop that have been sitting there wasn't just a tool, it was more like a reminder of something I was avoiding. I bought my laptop over two years ago with good intentions. At that time, I told myself it was for learning, for work, for growth. But it sat neatly in it's corner, untouched most days, sometimes it'll be for months. I'd dust it, charge it, open it once or twice, then place it back where it belonged.

Back then, my phone was my comfort zone. Everything I needed felt easier there... Fast, familiar, no effort to adjust or relearn. I could scroll endlessly, jump between apps, feel busy without actually building much. While the laptop was demanding from me... Attention, patience, focus, slowing down and I wasn’t ready for that.

Looking back now, that laptop represented a lot about my past self. It showed how lazy and distracted I was, lazy in intention. I was spending energy on things that didn’t add anything meaningful to my life goals, doing too much of the wrong things. It also exposed my fear of becoming a beginner again. I wanted perfection without practice, progress without discomfort.

Let me not even talk about how my unused laptop symbolized missed opportunities now that I think about it. I failed to see how much I could explore if I truly committed to learning. Writing, researching, building, exploring and so many other doors were there to access, quietly waiting, while I stayed glued to the easiest (my phone).

The spacing came late last year.

I had a realization that felt simple but heavy at the same time, "I will never get used to my laptop unless I use it frequently, intentionally and imperfectly". I understood that if I truly wanted to grow and make the laptop useful, I had to stop relying on my phone for everything. One sacrifice I made was deleting an app on my phone that took more of my time than I liked to admit, you can say it was another spacing that happened.

Letting it go taught me a powerful lesson about decluttering. I started choosing the laptop instead, not perfectly, not consistently at first, some days I struggled, other days I felt slow and frustrated but I kept showing up. And slowly, that corner in my home stopped representing avoidance and started representing my efforts.

The interesting thing is, there is no physical emptiness in that space today. The laptop is still there but it’s no longer a stationary object collecting dust. It is now something I interact with, in use and something that reminds me of who I’m Becoming. Now, when I look at that corner, I don’t see failure, all I see is me growing.

This may not be the kind of response the prompt expects but as I write this, I realize that what changed wasn’t the space, it was me. The void wasn’t in the corner of my home, it was in my habits, my focus, my willingness to grow. And filling that void didn’t require removing anything. It meant showing up differently for my becoming.

I don’t really have items in my home that have left behind empty spaces worth mentioning. But that corner, with my laptop resting there, tells a story I needed to put into words. A story about choosing discomfort over distraction, growth over ease and intention over habit. And maybe that’s what some spaces are meant to do, not remind us of what is gone, but reflect who we’re becoming.