I'm a historian and professor but increasingly feel that I need to do something that directly improves real life.

I'm not entirely sure.

I am hoping that this course will help me realize ways to bring regenerative frameworks to bear in my academic work and perhaps open a path towards an additional career working more directly with regenerative design.

I think I need to reexamine limiting assumptions/fears and accept that I may be able/worthy of contributing to tangible change.

I hope that this can be a starting point for an additional/complementary career.

Hmmm. A lot of reading about green design and gardening and invasive species and climate change. Rumination/anxiety over the state and trajectory of the myself/family, country, planet.

As a historian I try to remind myself and my students of teleology traps--that events and aspects of social systems (e.g., patriarchy, capitalism) are contingent on actions and that actions are choices. The reading I've done on the environmental potential of certain forms of gardening/permaculture/agriculture have helped me think in terms of nested/living systems. I'm having a hard time answering this without giving a list of history books!

I don't think I've had to articulate this before. I guess I would say that I don't believe in traditional deities/divinity, but try to honor the energy/value of the natural world including people. I think people are inherently good but we've come to a social/political/economic place where extraction and exploitation are normalized and embedded in almost every aspect of daily life.