My end, began with the words “I have some bad news, we lost our contract.”.
My future began with the words “I thought you said you had some bad news?”.
I was a cook at a corporate facility. Contract labor. It suited my lifestyle perfectly. I was able to spend as much as three months of the year at Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park (SoSMP). Not only that, my chef supported my lifestyle by providing me with gallon cans of scratch and dent items that otherwise would have been destroyed, as well as produce that wouldn’t last through the weekend. On a daily basis, I was able to freeze the days leftovers. Everything was to be discarded otherwise. You can’t imagine the diversity of food that I would take and prepare at all hours of the day and night. Yes, it was spectacular and it came with plenty of corporate benefits.
At an earlier point in my lifetime, I had given thought to how I would get by if I had to start all over again. It may have been the perfect time for that news, because the next day was Veterans Day. I decided to put everything I had been considering down in some sort of buisness planner or notebook. While looking for the right notebook I found a Crayola coloring book. It had patterns on one side of each perforated page. As I looked at it, each image brought an idea to mind. I bought it and began by writing what each image suggested, as it pertained to my plans. I wrote bold ideas in large letters, then turned the page and added the next idea. About 17 pages later, I went back and examined what I had written, filling in additional toughts and ideas in smaller print. I would sit and doodle with the drawings, and periodicaly add new thoughts.
I had been living in Jacksonville, FL and it was there that the GNOME Project was given its name. Thriving within the marshes, the marsh Gnome was chosen as our mascot and from there, I found an acronym that suited the objective. Gnostic Nomads Of Marshland Education G.N.O.M.E. I decided to drop the punctuation to take the attention from the name. I was amazed by how much reaction there was to using the word “Gnostic” in the name. It fit the acronym and reflected the traveling nature of the project. That’s all.
There is a crowd funding event that has been held in Jacksonville called One Spark. I decided to apply there to launch my idea. As I went over the perks associated with applicants of the event, I noticed that there were far more benefits given to actual businesses as opposed to individuals. That motivated me to hire a contract lawyer and file my articles of incorporation to become a registered not for profit in the state of Florida. GNOME Project, inc. was founded by spring of 2018.
The first project is being chronicled in another blog, but it was a success to say the least.
I wasn’t selected to participate in the One Spark event, but the application deadlines were a positive motivational force to get my business up and running. Something that I hadn’t noticed at the beginning of all this, was the title of the book I had bought. It was a Crayola book by some of Hallmarks illustrators called Patterned Escapes.