Keeping Calm and Carrying On

As a welcome-home / birthday gift, a friend gave me a journal with the Keep Calm and Carry On poster on the cover. I've always been fond of this poster, and I always love a new notebook (it's filled with such possibilities!), so all around this was an excellent gift. It's also pretty good advice. Just... keep calm and carry on.

I took notes all through my stay in Ward 3A, usually on little scraps of paper, completely at random, no sense of order. I just wrote as I observed. Once I returned home and received the Keep Calm journal, I transferred all my notes into the journal, categorizing them as things such as Patient Life, Groups, Staff, Religion, Meals, Cast of Characters, etc. This organization ought to make writing new posts for this blog all the easier.

Anyway, the journal's cover got me thinking. While "Keep Calm and Carry On" is a good sentiment for a psych ward, what other posters of that ilk might there be? Parody posters are popular for KCaCO, so I thought I'd do one of my own.

I made this one just for fun, using a combination of the KeepCalm-O-Matic and my favorite image editing program, Micrografx Picture Publisher (sadly no longer available). I'm very proud of the line art of the pills at the top. But, upon later thought, I figured that "be less crazy" is a bit negative for a motivational poster. So I tried again.

That's more positive, right? It looks more like the original poster, anyway. I think I'll put this on my bathroom mirror or something. Not exactly an affirmation or even a necessarily motivational sentiment, but still a good reminder to take one's meds.