“Just Do You”

Today I take another step forward. I suppose it’s always better to take a step forward than backward, right?

Today I meet with one of the commissioners on the zoning committee for the city. This particular meeting tells me how the GSO Compassion Mission needs to be zoned, leading to qualifications, rules and regulations. After zoning comes another meeting with another person at some other future date, but this meeting today allows me to at least see what rules I have to play by/think about in order to get this project (literally) off the ground.

Other things that I have to do is compile a list of contacts, partnerships, sponsors etcetera. Agreements. That sort of thing. I guess technically speaking, thanks to Google, my title for the GSO Compassion Mission would be CEO. But this is a startup. So, I’m not sure how that works. That all makes me think I could look back on this very post in a matter of years and laugh at my inexperience because that’s all it is: inexperience. But I do believe that my willingness to learn, my passion and my vision and a lot of divine help are what’s making this whole thing possible. If you don’t learn, you don’t grow. And if you don’t grow, you never find yourself.

That’s what I hope to bring about with the GSO Compassion Mission. The space to help people grow. The space to help people learn. The space to help people find themselves. As India Arie once said: “Just Do You”

The Road Less Traveled is Surprisingly…Really Hard!

This 8 year project has begun. Technically, I’ve been working on the house itself for a little while, which has been quite the experience in itself. In a matter of 3 months I’ve learned my way through a project called Google Sketchup in order to make the flat floor plan idea an actual object. Yesterday I found a software online called 3DVia which takes my Sketchup design and makes it a 3D model that apparently you can walk through. 

I don’t know how much I want to say about this whole project at this particular stage. But I will be posting photos here of what I’ve been working on, and once I get the walkthrough figured out, I’ll post that as well.

After this construction update, the following will be worked on: Working with **hopefully, fingers crossed** Southern Evergreen Design company to get the house built, Home Depot, and Habitat Restore. There will be a team of people involved to be on the potential board representing the different facets of the house. This board/panel will be the representatives when it comes to community outreach, marketing, presenting this to City Council to get space, apply for permits, write grants. In other words, build this home. 

To many people outside of this process (which is pretty much everybody except for me and the occasional person who reads this), this is a hobby. Unfortunately, even those closest to me tend to roll their eyes verbally or physically when I say anything with the words “Mission House” in the sentence, but this vision is real. This hope is real. This life is real. 

And I know we all get so distracted by accident and on purpose when things get hard and we all represent our hopes and dreams and fears on facebook and think that that’s enough. But it’s not. People need to build. People need to hope. Live. Laugh. Dream. Love. LIVE! All these things and more can be accomplished in the GSO Compassion Mission. 

Here’s to hoping that I, and those that choose to help, can get this off the ground one step at a time.