The thought of putting a story-plant about computers on my beloved bloggy greenhouse would be like inserting a large piece of electronic junk into a green house of orchids and blossoms.

However, there’s an unseen link between our electronic wall paper and creativity that I’ve discovered recently … and so on this occasion I’m making electronics and organics collide to write a post about computers.

Argh!!

So.

Quite recently I was poodling around online when I came upon and article that showed the funny, quirky differences between men and women.

It was one of those how women do it v how men do it type things and was illustrated in photographs.

The only part of the article I can remember is the that men generally have minimalistic computer desktops that teeter on the edge of digital ocd, whilst women’s desktops are often a chaotic splurge of random documents and images and general shit that they’ve dumped there for later.

This made me laugh because it’s exactly how it is with me and Ads.

“Babe, you need to sort that desktop out!” Ads always says to me as he glances over my shoulder when I’m trying to find some vital thing that I needed five minutes ago.

(Then proceeds to go into bathroom, shower, shave and leave the window shut and wet towels on the floor.)

?

Yet, thanks to my fiance’s thoughtful concern about hoarder-style screen, I do try and do a regular clean up and can genuinely say that I like my desk top better when it’s clean and it also makes my computer a more inviting place to be.

But this now brings us to what is BEHIND all of the icons and dumped documents on our desktop screen.

It’s a picture that sits on every computer screen and has an extremely powerful influence over our mood, mind set and creativity.

Do you know the one?

Yup, your desktop image/ wallpaper.

For many years I paid little attention to my screen image.

Sometimes my thoughtful and generous computer would provide me with some ever changing slides of beautiful places.

Other times I might pop on a holiday photograph of some exotic location.

Other times I’d find a shot and be like “WOW, I wanna see that daily” and would get a little more conscious about what I was putting up.

Never did I really consider just how VITAL our desktop images are – especially if we work a lot on our computers.

At least, I didn’t consider it until I noticed the effect that my screen image was having on my creativity.

For quite a few months I’ve been really creatively blocked.

As a writer, I was feeling pent up and frustrated in my need to write, but the thought of getting on my computer just stumped me every time. I’d literally do anything I could to avoid having to sit down and turn on that screen.

Then one afternoon, I became acutely aware of the image on my desktop.

The image was of the Horse Shoe in Arizona.

The photograph had touched my soul when I first saw it, but now when I looked, all I saw was one dense chunk of solid rock block.

It was like a massive obstacle before me – insurmountable and overpowering – just like the creative block I’d been facing with my writing.

Seconds later I was on Google images looking for a different picture that would inspire a different feeling; a sense of joy, connection, happiness and humanity.

Eventually I found a picture of an African boy laughing. Just looking at the lad’s face made my heart beam and my soul grin.

I saved the image as my desktop wallpaper and instantly my mood shifted.

My heart lifted.

I felt inspired to write and share ideas and stories with the world again.

Often unseen and rarely explored, images and iconography have a profound effect on the onlooker’s energy and psychology.

Visual branding and logos are the number one communication tool used in business and religion to INSPIRE a feeling in the onlooker. This feeling can be motivational, inspirational or limiting and acts as THE KEY to the action we then take.

If you use your computer on a daily basis and work from it, that desk top is like the atmosphere of your digital world. It’s the face you are met with multiple times a day and is sinking into your subconscious without you even being aware of it.

What is currently on your desk top?

What feelings does this picture inspire?

You might have an inspirational quote on your screen, but even then, try to look beyond the words at the picture instead, for THIS is what your subconscious mind is reading and not the words.

Is your image solitary and tranquil, when what you want is to feel connected with your world?

Is your image too energetic when actually you require a more relaxed state to work in?

Your technological environment is as important to design as your bedroom, your holiday or your inner self – and if we don’t take a moment to choose how we want to design it, then it will design us instead.

Master the Machine with Love

xxx