Being mindful is pretty much a way of life. It sounds amazing to be open to caring for others just as much as yourself. It’s almost peaceful knowing your apart of the greater good. There’s some carbon footprint value test online that you can take to learn how much your household is affecting the CO2 output comparable to the world. It asks several questions about your cars and their gas millage, cost of electric and water, and how many people are living in your house. Just a lot of questions like that. I honestly didn’t know the answers to all of them but I took a shot. I scored 2% worse than the average, and I had 56 tons of CO2 per year output. Knowing this and how great it sounds to be mindful makes me want to make some changes in my lifestyle. Diving deeper into the meaning of mindfulness that I acquired from the “Mindfulness and Sustainability” reading… Mindful is when we are aware of others and our surroundings. We need to be mindful of ourselves before we can be mindful about anyone else.  Meditation helps to ease the mind and connect with one’s thoughts and feelings. Being aware of our surroundings leads to better sustainability. We care more about the world around us. We can’t help others if we don’t help ourselves first. We need to be mentally and physically healthy. Being mindful creates habits. We use our habits when deciding to do sustainable or non-sustainable activities. The happier and more in touch with the world a person is the more likely they are to keep up with sustainability. There are ways to diagram out problems within fields of study. Mine is Interior Design. Using responsibility mapping I would have to come up with three problems and branch out to catalyst that would support my change like the government, consumers, or other designers. The dig deeper into the problem by asking myself what’s the designers role in possibly changing the problem from their point of entry. They could stop implementing the products into their design, basically stop buying from the merchandisers. Even deeper what could the merchandisers do? They could stop purchasing from the manufacturer and set standards for all their buy-able worthy products. Being sustainable in this industry is not necessarily impossible. It takes being aware of materials that are harmful to the environment and steering clear of them. For Activity 2, I’m focusing of using sustainable materials in interior design. I’m learning about why designers should care about the environment and implement that in their designs. It’s about using material with a story so that buyers are more inclined to purchase it and want it in their buildings. It’s hard to find and make green materials though. All process for creating material can have harmful effects on the environment. I want to try and solve this wicked problem when I enter my field of study. Hit the ground running. Why not? With interfering factors like paradigms which is the unlimited growth of humans and using nature for making money, it is an overwhelming responsibility to overcome. But with always practicing self-narrative (thinking about the future and the what will happens if this happens) I can make a difference in Interior Design Sustainability. IT ALL STARTS WITH ME!!!!!