Here’s who I am:

• Outdoorsman

• Urban explorer

• Bumpkin

• Artist

• Entrepreneur

• History buff

• Extrovert

• Bartender

• Collector

• Poli-Sci dropout

Finding yourself, eh? Is that what being twenty’s about?

I’ve been looking.

When I was a kid, I spent days on end with a metal detector in hand, searching through fields and forests and digging up bits of buried history. I learned where I was from, and who came before me.

As a teen, I searched the tops of mountains on an Outward Bound trip. I pushed myself further than I thought I could. I learned how landscape shapes people in ways that aren’t always obvious.

I grew up in a town of a thousand people, then moved to the city and felt something switch on inside me. I searched again. Which place do I fit in? I fell in love with Toronto — the energy, the noise, the hidden corners. But that small town made me who I am.

I signed up for the Summer Company and ran my own business. Vintage clothing. I made lots of money, but what I loved were the stories. The T-shirts, the concerts, the old man and his hat. I sell it. You buy it. How’d you like that? Sometimes the stories were real, sometimes I made them up — but that’s salesmanship. Everyone expects a bit of panache.

I’ve worked in kitchens and dining rooms and behind bars. I’ve been yelled at and tipped, ignored and promoted. I’ve watched how people move, how they gather, how a room changes depending on who’s in it — what’s in it. How different the front is from the back.

I’ve painted, drafted, sketched, sculpted. I explore. I create.

I thought I wanted to be an architect, but empty buildings just weren’t the thing.

I thought I wanted to be an urban planner or lawyer. I even enrolled in political science, but that wasn’t the thing.

I’m a U of T dropout. What a cliché.

But I don’t regret any of it. And while these experiences seem unrelated, they’re what makes me, me. And all these different things — are they really that different? Or have I been circling an idea without giving it a name?

Environmental Design.

The mix of people and places, history and objects. Of art and of parks and of mountains and nightclubs and shitty apartments. Small town, big city. Wilderness. Concrete. The improvised, unplanned, unpolished spaces that say more about a place than a landmark ever could.

It’s all human-centred.

I don’t know if I’ve “found myself” or if that’s even a thing. But Environmental Design feels like the place where all these unrelated passions, these experiences, these places that shaped me, finally meet.

I want to explore more. The technical tools, the structure, the training — I don’t have them yet. I want to learn how to turn instinct into intention. Concept into completion. Idea into thing.

So that all of those people with their very long lists — that make them who they are — can find their places, their experiences, their connections…

Their thing.