First Major Gift to Self

Today I made the first biggest purchase I have ever had for myself. Eversince I have been a working adult, I have never given myself something really nice and pricey for Christmas, whereas close friends and relatives receive a little something from myself every year. Just being a little thoughtful in the season of giving.

I have given myself some form of contentment in the past, though. But they weren't major gifts. Shoes don't count - I wear them all year round anyway. And the shirts I bought before were never that expensive. I have always bought working (work-friendly?) clothes - short-sleeved, breathable, comfy, reasonably priced. And I never saw myself queueing to pay for a suit or a long-sleeved shirt either. That might be appropriate a little later in life. Just not this moment.

Thanks to a not-so-fat bonus, I was able to buy my first major gift to self. It's just one thing I've been looking forward to for a long time. Being so busy with work has been such a mess, I need to organize my stuff. The classical music, the pictures, the videos. Now's the time to transfer these things to some place permanent.

It's a laptop. Acer Aspire 4520.

120GB Hard Drive Capacity
DVD+/-RW
AMD Turion Processor
1.0GB RAM

Apparently, I don't seem excited as I should be. Maybe because what I'm about to do next is a boring, unadventurous chore. The difficult part is migrating all my files from the CD's and DVD's (which I used for back up and storage) to the brand new laptop. That's the chore.

I do hope that after that, it would be heaven. It's hard to imagine, but all these classical music files will be put into good use. Now, I can listen to them whenever and wherever I want to (except while in transit because that's what the meager iPod is for - which, by the way, I won't be getting myself until I think of it as a priority AND must have huge hard drive space for all these classical musical files - I'll never know what I feel like listening to at any time, right?). So, I figured I better do this migrating of files to laptop now rather than much later when the CD's accumulate dust, and render the files unusable.

There are a lot of advantages, really. Now, I have space for my personal files and documents (and not share these with my work laptop). I don't need to worry about being reprimanded for "lack of disk space" or "too much downloading" in the office. And I can take it as an opportunity to keep myself organized like projecting or keeping track of financial expenses / income via worksheets, classifying / sorting files, keeping audio playlists active, and surfing the net at any time and at any length without the guilt.

I do hope this will last and be something that's really mine and not a for-family-use thing. To some extent, yes, it can be used by the rest of the household. I'll just have to keep my folders private and unshared. Definitely, there will be different user accounts as well. My plan is not to have it at home most of the time, anyway. Only when family desperately needs it.

That's right. It sounds selfish. But that's what I plan anyway - this laptop will have everything that's in me, everything that's about me. And I'm not sharing. Some may take it as a gesture that stems from selfishness, but it's just that I'm very private especially with personal stuff like these. Let's see how this thing works with a big family like ours. Oooh. Now, I suddenly got excited.