NaturesGym Weblog

Over the last two to three years, I have had some ideas that I thought would make interesting t-shirt designs. I really didn’t give it much thought, until I decided to start writing down my ideas just to make sure that I didn’t forget any. I thought that maybe some day, down the road, when I had the time, I would make the designs and try and sell them. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to draw. My drawing was so bad, the stick figure people I drew looked grossly maldeformed (I don’t know if that is an actual word, but I couldn’t spell misshappen, so I decided to make up my own word). I thought maybe I could hire an artist to draw what I wanted.

We moved, again. My spouse is in the military and we move every three years. I have been having difficulty finding employment. One, we have moved 5 times in the last 12 1/2 years. Employers tend to avoid hiring transient people, which I can understand, up to a point. I applied for 17 jobs in our new location. I received three definite, you are qualified, but not rated high enough. The other 14 didn’t even bother to reply. I contacted some of them and their response was that they had received my application and they would contact me. Oh well.

One afternoon, as I was struggling with what I should do, another t-shirt idea came into my mind. So I wrote it down. But the idea was very intriguing. As I thought about it, the idea blossomed into more than just a design, I began to think of it as a clothing line. I had a few more ideas. I then decided that if this is what I should do, then I was going to need help with more ideas, drawing talent, marketing, etc. I prayed and explained everything that was going on in my life, what I was thinking about doing, and asked for help. I then went to bed. I got very little sleep that night. I was up and down, in and out of bed all night. I had a notebook and pen and would write down all the ideas that came into my mind. By the time the alarm went off, I had written down more than 200 ideas.

I then committed to making this work. I had asked for help and received much more help than I deserved. I now had to take what I was given and make something of it. I sketched out a design, very roughly. It didn’t look right. I tried several different layouts, but it didn’t feel right. So I changed my focus from the layout of the design to the core images that would be placed in the layouts. Things started to work.

My designs are all based on the concept that the best place to work out or exercise is, well, outdoors. Mother nature is an excellent Gym. Nature’s Gym, Alaska’s Gym, Arizona’s Gym, Hawaii’s Gym, Idaho’s Gym, etc. A person can do any number of activities in these places. Best of all, when you ‘workout’ in one of these Gyms, you are having fun, doing something you like to do. You aren’t in a room with a bunch of other people feeling self conscious. Fishing, hiking, snowmobiling, skiing, kayaking, golfing, viewing wildlife, etc. these are the things that give you a really good workout.

Being healthy shouldn’t be so much about how you look as it should be about the fact that you are active. Get out and be active. But when you do get out, you should really show off your interests/talent/passions with a shirt from Nature’s Gym.