Environmental Energy

According to various media sources, from advertisement to health magazines to co-op newsletters, energy comes from certain consumables, from protein shakes, ginsing supplements, low-carb diets, wheat-free non-dairy raw-foods diets, or if you really want to unleash the beast without delay, you can get yourself a carbonated energy cocktail. From other sources, you might hear that exercise is really the way to go, and that its squats and swimming and ab crunches several times a week that will really get your juices flowing.

Images of either food or exercise as the sources of energy makes it seem like energy is something that people store up in their individual little tanks to later fuel biological engines. Now, I believe diet and exercise can help people feel more energetic. I've started putting a least one organic carrot in all my lunches, and I try to get to the gym a couple times a week. But as someone really seeking more energy, I've turned more of my attention to energy as something that comes from interaction with my environment. I'm trying to ask myself specifically what are the situations: simulate, inspire and call forth my effort. This energy can come from interactions with art, nature or architecture (a little credit to feng shui). But more than anything, individual energy is social. Even something as mythically lonely as writing, I see as largely motivated by networks of social energy. Without some sort of positive social feedback, it's hard to imagine that most anyone would be motivated to produce anything they do beyond what's necessary for subsistence.