I’ve been feeling a lot like the conspiracy meme lately. I’m Charlie Day, ranting in front of a conspiracy board. Conspiracies are interesting because they tug at our love of puzzles and mysteries and ultimately reach a satisfying conclusion: it’s all connected.

To anyone who is paying attention it’s perhaps not at all news that everything is all connected. Our health is connected to the health of our community and the world at large (thank you pandemic for teaching us this important lesson, if only briefly). Our wellbeing is connected to the wellbeing of the animals around us. Take this idea and you can apply it to anything. It’s why I’ve been having a hard time picking a lane in any of my endeavors.

In terms of my career, most all things sound interesting to me and I can follow the thread of connections to get there. I work as a software engineer but I want to work as an environmental scientist. They use code, which is something I know pretty well and work on issues realted to nature, which I’ve loved as a kid. I find nature to be beautiful and harmonious and pleasing. The way I find art to be beautiful and harmonious and pleasing. I make art. I could make art as my primary occupation as well. I love thinking about spaces and really being immersed. Perhaps I can take that and my artistic skills and become a set designer. I have started learning to sew because textiles are beautiful and I love costume and stories, perhaps I can be a costume designer? On and on and on. No matter how disparate the job description there is a thread of interest I can follow anywhere.

With my category of interests that I’ll label as activism (though beyond reading about stuff and maybe writing about some stuff, I haven’t actually done anything yet so the term feels a bit grandiose but is apt enough for the situation), I also can’t pick a lane. I love the suburbs because of my proximity to nature and some people. But my suburb needs to be more walkable. I have a few ideas on that. In order to also make my suburb nicer it should be greener. More gardens, more trees, maybe even more solar panels. People are doing some interesting things with green spaces. I’ve been looking into cultural landscapes. There aren’t really any around here, only things further south, closer to the city.

Greenifying outdoor spaces then begs the question of how does one greenify indoor spaces? Biophilic design is all about that. The concept has a few foundations that we can very generally call “elemental.” Increasing people’s access to nature improves health. That access comes in the form of access to light, air, vegetation, water, fire. The connection a person has to a space and how that space can be oriented to increase access to these aspects of nature. Why does one room flow well while the other doesn’t? Not I’m back to my interest in fung shui, which I had briefly started looking into as a teenager. And now I’m back. Because biophilic design is starting to sound an awful lot like a more “scientific” explanation to the concept of feng shui. That’s a Japanese concept right?

If you look at Japanese architecture there are a lot of natural elements involved. The garden designs are interesting too. When I visited Tokyo I was blown away by how clean the city was and how beautiful, down to the smallest detail. The manhole covers had sakura blossoms. Somebody really cared to make these things beautiful.

And the concept of beauty brings me back to art. Except I’m still thinking about Japan and stationery, and how that’s an interest that has grown for me lately. I’ve always kept sketchbooks but I also have a million half started notebooks and sketchbooks to the point where I can’t properly number the volumes anymore. So now I’m thinking I’m going to put (more or less) everything in one notebook and let the connections fall where they may. That’s how I think about all these things.

It’s all connected.