A type Seven personality— “The Enthusiast”—is scattered, sporadic, fun-loving, and adventure-seeking. Sevens are open to change, and may even crave change for the sake of keeping their lives from becoming stagnant. Sevens are not often concerned with organization and order as much as the ability to be spontaneous and always on-the-go. Sevens look for variety in life, and don’t often feel the need to ground themselves in permanence. They would rather maintain their freedom to explore and experience new things than stick to routine or order.
Joel, who is a type Seven wing Six, lets his personality come out through the space of his bedroom. He describes his room as being “a hodgepodge” of his various interests. There’s no consistent color scheme or pattern to the objects in his room, but rather a spontaneous mixture of random decorations and objects. He loves to collect things, like colorful sneakers, 90’s action figures, and miniature sports cars. On the wall is an Arsenal poster, his favourite soccer team. While you could say a connecting thread through some of these artifacts is sports, Joel claims there is no intentional thematic grouping behind them. They’re simply a melting pot of his passions and interests.
Joel also speaks of how he likes to ensure possibility or potential to move things around in his space. This shows his spontaneous personality as a type Seven; he doesn’t want to be tied down to decorating or using his space one particular way or another. There’s room to readjust and move things as he needs or desires.
Despite the lack of clearly constructed organization, Joel doesn’t believe his room is “total chaos.” There’s a relative structure to how much of his space he uses, and where he carries out particular tasks. Most of his school work, for example, is done at his desk, and not anywhere else. Appropriately, the technological tools he needs regularly to do his work, like his laptop, phone, headphones, and printer, all remain on his desk. This shows some consistency in the way he uses his space.
Perhaps this relative regularity in the way he uses specific spaces in his room for particular tasks is a sign of his six-wing tendencies. The familiarity of working in the same environment, with the same tools and artifacts, may bring a sense of security and comfort required to concentrate on his work.
As a minimalist, the items in his room can be categorized into a four main groups: clothes, technology, decor/displays (such as collectibles), and books. As an English major and Torrey Honors student, Joel certainly has a lot of books in his room. These (and clothes) are some of the objects that clutter up his floor. Although he calls them a potential “tripping hazard,” this doesn’t bother Joel so much because he can generally clean up his room easily and quickly. His minimalism keeps him from having too many things to worry about creating a mess.
A Seven’s basic desire is to to be satisfied and content—to have their needs fulfilled. The needs that are fulfilled in his room, in Joel’s case, seem to be productivity and entertainment. Joel uses his room to do all kinds of things: core workouts on the floor, listening to podcasts, reading books. Both work and recreation come at play in the same space.
A Seven’s basic fear is being deprived and in pain. This may not necessarily be clearly depicted in Joel’s use of space. One way we can see a reliance on his personal space, though, is through the sacredness of its use. When at home, Joel prefers to be in his room, and generally alone. He doesn’t invite many people to his room, but instead uses it as a sacred space to use for personal work or recreation. This could indicate a desire to preserve that space for the fulfillment of needs mentioned above. There isn’t conclusive evidence, though, that this is the case.
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