I still get anxiety over things and it’s hard for me to speak up sometimes. I need lots of practice and hiking nature trails is calming. I’ve been thinking of working with nature park conservation or helping with sustainable management. Sustainable management provides equity such as food justice for impoverished families, environmental friendly services, ways to conserve resources so our future generations can enjoy them, making sure that people get fair wages. Sustainable management covers economic growth as it works on environmental health because with a better environment and more equitable management of resources people will be happier and increase productivity. I find that the UN has the sustainable development goals and they are very fascinating. They want to limit environmental health hazards like pollutants from smog, improve access to people getting jobs, end poverty. I have always been fascinated at sustainable agriculture and how people can feed a growing population without degrading the environment. Currently the issue is water in the pine barrens in new jersey. Many of the freshwater ground water pools are drying up due to development. People are cutting down trees so that the soils don’t hold as much water anymore and agriculture uses 30% of world’s water. So the concept of sustainable agriculture and sustainable nature conservation is very fascinating because I wonder how we can protect the environment that we’re losing. There used to be lots of tall pine trees but they were mostly cut down to make charcoal for furnaces or medical use and the last charcoal furnace was in the 1990s. My pine barrens class and the UN class I took last semester are fascinating, been learning lots.

I’ve been planning out things not to overwhelm myself or berate myself, working on being kind to myself. I still slip from time to time but I’m working on reminding myself of my worth when my inner critic tells me I’m not worth it

Grateful for you