Greetings! I’m Tanja, a coastal child from the North of Norway.
I’m a student living in Trondheim, Norway, with my dog Atlas and my roommate Julie in a central two-bedroom apartment.
I come from a small island village on Helgelandskysten.
I grew up in a four-season climate, within walking distance of great mountains, coasts, and forests, which is something I find great comfort in today as an adult and is represented via grounding elements in my setup.
Trondheim is about seven hours away from home, where I am finishing up a bachelor’s degree in radiography after a decade of doing photography.
In 2016, I started working part-time in a hobby & craft supply store, Panduro, where I still work occasionally while studying.
I love being able to stay creative.
It’s a source of energy for me.
Over the twelve years before moving here, I’ve lived in thirteen different cities in two different countries.
I’ve been in Trondheim for three years now, and it is the longest I’ve stayed put in one place since leaving home at age 16 to study.
Because of this, my setups are ever-changing and evolving as I grow, but it’s also the place I put a lot of effort into making a home.
In 2021, I lost my then-fiancé and essentially became a widow before the age of 30, which has been such a transformative experience for me.
I have found myself returning a lot more to my roots and spiritual side.
Although I have always had that part inside of me, it has only started surfacing more in the past two years. This shift coincides with finding greater security in myself as a result of going through a traumatic experience.
I enjoy the freedom of the minimalist mindset, practicing mindfulness and letting go of things as my ideas and needs have changed.
I try to be more conscious about how I use and where I place my own energy and time and I find a lot of guidance and comfort in the Tao.
I used to be a lot more angry and stressed, and while I still have my moments, I am much more aware of my inner ways and how it manifests physically.
This awareness allows me to meet and handle these feelings in a completely different way.
In a sense, I have made my setup into my own type of Zen garden or altar to help ground myself.
My hobbies include hiking, embroidery, macramé, seed bead bracelets, drawing/painting, video games, movie watching, and photography.
I help run a peer support community for young widow(-er)s we fittingly called The Dead End on Discord, where I mainly function as their tech monkey for the server setup.
My desktop setup is located smack-dab in the middle of the kitchen and living room area because my desk fits perfectly there, and my bedroom is too small.
The first thing that catches people’s attention is the serene atmosphere created by calm colours and elements, as well as the hand-painted beige acrylic frames adorning my monitors.
Our landlady lets us paint and hang things as we want, but the green wall paint (Olivenlund by Butinox) was already in place when we moved in.
It’s a colour a lot of people ask about, and I recently had a person on Reddit show me a photo of a wall they did inspired by ours with the same paint!
I did not want to spend money on new monitors for the sake of colour.
I wanted to take measures to reduce the appearance of darkness in my setup with some quick and cheap fixes.
It has become quite the icebreaker whenever I bring people over or post my photos on socials.
I love the big windows on both sides that provide a healthy dose of daylight and fresh air.
I went from having a darker setup with neon lights and lava lamps to a complete 180° switch where I need things to be calm and clean.
I love natural materials and textures and want to avoid blacks and plastics to the best of my ability.
I’m always looking for ways to create and craft things myself.
For instance, I added a crocheted band around my makeup glass and a macramé addition to my phone stand to make them blend more into my setup.
It’s amazing what some cotton yarn and beige paint can do to better tie mismatching things together.
The black and yellow computer chair is covered with a ten dollar slipcover I found on AliExpress.
I have a dopamine neon LED sign that I got as a gift from my late fiancé that people often ask about, and you can find similar ones on Etsy.
In addition to the dopamine lamp, I do have a serotonin tattoo, so now I need to figure out how to implement caffeine into this mix without it becoming too much!
I also have a half-assed macramé wall-hanging I made while trying to figure out some knots. And I don’t know, it just stuck around despite having made better and bigger ones since.
Most of the items on display serve as reminders of my personal values and abilities.
I used to have a lot more figurines and nerd merch around, but I realised it was contributing to mental clutter.
So, I transitioned to keeping various enamel pins, which represent elements of what I enjoy, on a painted canvas instead.
I also keep some sun catchers in the window.
Some are bought, some I made myself, and I love how it will cast tiny rainbows all over my living room at certain points of the day.
Always within arms reach, I have a chair with a blanket for my dog for some free oxytocin supply throughout the day.
Atlas is a six-year-old Swedish Vallhund, popularly known as the Viking corgi or wolf corgi, despite being an ancient Swedish breed.
He has shown time and time again he can live up to his name, being the resilient dog he has grown to be, and I am lucky to have him as my familiar and partner in crime.
