I have an unhealthy obsession with stickers. I was recently gifted the most exquisite item to ever be put into my hands. It was a 3.5” in diameter, vinyl, hand-cut, screen-printed, custom-made Eagle’s Eye sticker made by the most exceptional human to walk on the Enloe tile floors: A. Oishiibasu. The design was beautiful and minimalist, and screamed ”I am in newspaper!” But not in an obnoxious way, of course.  It even came in TWO sizes, fitting perfectly between the RedBubble stickers on my laptop sticker collage. A match made in heaven.

Stickers are legitimately the greatest invention to have been introduced to all homosapiens on this Earth. Have a boring notebook from the dollar store? Put a sticker on. Want to cover the non-Apple logo on your bootleg laptop? Sticker it! Life is falling apart? Stickers will fix that! You can stick them on anything, anywhere, anytime.

With my excessive collection of free stickers, I should have them on all of my notebooks, right? Wrong- I cannot commit! There’s always a voice in my head reminding me, you know once you stick it on, you can never go back. Stickers are a permanent deal. You could try to scratch it off of the surface, but you’ll only leave a bunch of paper bits and sticky residue. Obtaining its perfect placement is a very intense process. Just today, I spent ten minutes staring at my bootleg laptop figuring out the perfect place for my Eagle’s Eye sticker, thoughts going in circles. Is the sticker’s design pretty enough? Will I get bored of it? Is it waterproof? I shouldn’t waste a waterproof sticker on my laptop, it should go on my water bottle, right? Wait, no. Is it really worth it to put on my bottle? That’s prime real estate. But am I really going to find a better sticker? I’m too cheap to actually buy a high quality sticker, and what qualifies as a good sticker? Oh wait that was my problem to begin with! It’s so problematic, the whole point of stickers to be able to stick it anywhere, it’s a simple one-and-done thing. So why must I try so hard to collect as many stickers as possible, only to shove them into a box in my desk, never to be seen? 

I fear that the only reason why I collect stickers is for the idea that I could stick them anywhere. When it comes to proceeding with ceremonious peeling of the sticker back, placing it on, and smoothing out the bubbles, I can never commit. The unknown future is terrifying, especially when making a decision that has such a permanent impact. Though, what do I do when I have to confront my future plans? I deal with them later! And so, the Eagle’s Eye sticker went straight into the dark corner of my desk drawer, in the box of wasted potential.