Motivational Poster! – “De-Motivational posters are very common on the internet these days, but people often forget about the thing they were based on–Motivational posters. Why not make one of those for a change of pace? Motivate yourself (or someone else).” http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/motivational-poster/
Tutorial:
- The hardest part: figuring out what picture and what quote you want to use along with your goal for inspiration
- Find the picture online and post it into gimp to edit (you may have to crop it to make room for text or to delete clutter)
- Add the appropriate styles/colored/sized text onto the image
- DONE- save!
Growing up I have always been a sucker for quotes, I even had a quote book. However, this piece is not just about finding a cheesy motivational quote and slapping it onto a pretty picture. No, this piece is more of a personal one. Welcome to the dark side of my blog. In high school I dated this really loser guy for a long time and he made me feel so low with his words and actions I felt more like the mud, not the lotus. When you’re around that kind of negativity for so long because you couldn’t realize that it wasn’t a normal thing, your whole identity starts to change. It starts to shrink and deform into something ugly, something unrecognizable to yourself. You look in the mirror and can’t recognize your own eyes. It even affects the mind. You think, “Are these even my thoughts, or are they thoughts I have been conditioned to think?” This happens to many people, male or female, and maybe they won’t realize it for years. But the story here is the story of a girl who dated a guy who threw words at her like daggers. They were so sharp they were similar to a paper cut that definitely cut deep but was so thin and precise it went unnoticed. Eventually she did notice. And she left. When she left, she had another problem. She had to either find herself before him or she had to recreate herself. Either direction was a challenge. How should she talk? Act? Think?
A few years later, she went to this beautiful garden that had the aroma of love and electricity of life. She was taking pictures of these lily pads (actually mixed in near lotus leaves) when she noticed a few radiant flowers towering up over the water. This seemed unusual because she was not aware that water lilies could grow that high! She decided that they were so different and beautiful she just had to figure out the name of them so she could find out more about these delicate flowers. She found out that they were in fact lotus flowers: flowers that are thin and papery, however they grow through muddy waters best. She also found her new (and to this day) favorite quote that shaped her life forever: “Just like the lotus we too have the ability to rise from the mud, bloom out of the darkness and radiate into the world.” (http://www.ba-bamail.com/content.aspx?emailid=20779) Also a Buddhist proverb from her religions class in college: “The lotus flower blooms most beautifully from the deepest mud.” Hearing this quote in college was a huge reminder to keep growing. She even decided to get an outline of the lotus flower as a tattoo so it will forever be a reminder to rise up.
Rising up was exactly what I wanted my motivational message to be. A lotus flower rises up through the mud and reaches up high out of the water towards the stars. This is what I want my message to be to the world. Whether you live a perfect life or not, there is always room to keep growing.
Like I said… Think harder, not work harder.
