As I’m further thinking through this, I feel a little silly saying it this way, because “atomic notes,” by definition, reference atoms. But I think much of what I have going on is that I have “molecular notes” – and there are no related atomic notes, so the connection points are missing.
So it’s as if I’m writing about water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2), and those feel like they’re at the simplest level. But there’s no “oxygen” (O) note, so even though I know in my head that water and carbon dioxide are related because they’re both built on oxygen, there’s not that midpoint to link them both to inside the vault.