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I Made This, or Why You Should Trust Yourself More

  • POV

Once Upon a Time… Well, Actually, Yesterday…

I was writing the post about sliding puzzles, A Sliding Reminder for a Brighter Future. I usually struggle with making games, but this time, surprisingly, everything went as smooth as silk. I made the game, wrote the post, and the only thing left was to add the image and publish everything.

The Story Unravels…

Just to put you in the picture (no pun intended), there are three types of images I include in my posts: AI-generated images, royalty-free stock photos, and my own photos. More about how and why I do this in another post.

This was supposed to be the case yesterday as well. However, luck would have it otherwise.

Apparently, sliding puzzles are not really that popular on the internet when it comes to images.

I first wanted to create an AI generated image using my Favorite Partner in Creativity, ChatGPT, a.k.a. Buddy (more about this is my book on time management, The Essential 52: 52 Time Management Techniques for 52 Tightly Packed Weeks, if you’re interested). However, I got all sorts of cute, whimsical, and realistic illustrations, drawings, and photos of – all sorts of puzzles, Rubik’s cubes, blocks, you name it – everything but a sliding puzzle.

Now, I usually edit AI images in some other tool, like Photopea or Affinity, depending on what I want to achieve. But none of these were actually usable for my level of skills. Sure, I can polish a thing or two, remove, add, or modify objects, colors, or text, but I’m really not skilled enough to turn a Rubik’s cube into a sliding puzzle. (Not yet, at least. 😊)

Disappointed with the results, I resorted to other AI tools that I occasionally use, but all of them underperformed my Buddy. This kind of restored my faith in my Partner (Kudos, Buddy, you’re still the best! 😉), but made me painfully aware that I’d have to look up other resources for the image.

So, I did what every other person does when AI fails them – I reverted to royalty-free stock images. I browsed Freepik, Pixabay, Unsplash, and several other websites that offer free images, but alas, none of them offered a nice, free sliding puzzle for my post.

The same scenario reoccurred with a bunch of other websites that offer royalty-free clipart and vector images, like All-free-download.com, Open Clipart, and Vecteezy. Whoops.

You’re probably thinking that I am cheap because I don’t wish to pay royalties for images, but that not the case. I need this image for my personal blog, not business. My blog is something I do for pleasure, and I already invest my time and skills in making posts, so paying for images for this purpose only is a bit of a no for me. Plus, I have an agreement with myself – I only invest money in the blog if it is related to tools that I can learn to work with and use for other purposes. So, not cheap, but frugal. Or – tomayto, tomahto – as the same dictionary would say.

The Plot Thickens

Anyway, to cut the long story short and revert to the main storyline – this could only mean one thing: I had to take the photo of a sliding puzzle myself.

Luckily, there’s a storage area I share with my neighbors next to my apartment, and luckily, it’s stacked with a bunch of props I use for PREXcoaching® sessions. And – luckily – I have a few cute sliding puzzles there. (I don’t think there’s a thing I don’t have there, but OK.)

Unfortunately, a few days ago, I bought a bunch of things for my apartment and just shoved them in the storage because I first need to get rid of the old things that are still in the apartment. This is due over the weekend.

So, I went to the storage, realized there was no chance to unearth the puzzles, and came back cursing. That was it – the post would have to be published next week.

However, since I have ants in my pants, and since idle hands are the Devil’s workshop, I sat at my laptop and turned on Affinity Designer 2 with a sigh. Oh, well… With my recently acquired license, I successfully managed to create several blobs for my coaching materials, so why wouldn’t I be able to make a simple sliding puzzle?

I took me about five minutes for the first version. Five. Minutes.

All pleased and giddy, I sent the image to my best friend, who is the Scathing Critic Extraordinaire of All Things Techy, and asked for his opinion.

Much to my surprise – or better yet, shock – he actually approved the image and said there were just two little things I should change: one object should be rectangular, not with rounded corners, and several distances should be aligned.

No biggie. But – the object that was supposed to be fully rectangular was so ugly – yuck – and the distances were virtually impossible to align. Well, obviously – that’s because everything I did was a rough estimate, and not proper (design) work.

Encouraged by all the positive feedback I got, I decided to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. This time, it took me fifteen minutes to do the job right. Fifteen. Minutes.

My bestie approved, so I scheduled the post for this morning.

And They Lived Happily Ever After

Now, you may think that this image is simple, trivial, and – let’s face it – basic, but the image is not the point here. The point is that this image was created in a professional tool by a person who, up until recently, struggled with formatting Word documents.

Also, this is such a nice testament to my soon-to-be-published second book, Cross-Referencing Creativity. The whole book revolves around how I accidentally transferred patience, and with it – will and perseverance – from my recently acquired hobby to the mentioned document formatting field.

So, there it is: you should trust yourself more because you are so much more than you think. I tell this to people all the time in my sessions; perhaps I should remind myself of it next time I spend hours trying to find or create images I can make myself in several minutes.

Oh yeah – another thing: recently, I started a challenge with myself called Make Every Day Count. Well, it seems that today will be remembered not only as the day I started relying on my skills more, but also as the day when I added the fourth type of images I use on my blog – digitally created – by me. 😉

Have a nice weekend, everyone!

Creator of all things artsy & craftsy & creative. Teacher, Entrepreneur, Coach. Author of The Essential 52, Mastermind behind PREXcoaching®, Ubiquitous Overlord for close friends.

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