Load
The year did not start with resolution. It started with weight.
Ten pounds over the holidays. Not dramatic, not unusual, just the accumulated math of rich food, irregular sleep, and weeks spent far from any routine that resembles my own. At home, mornings are designed: yogurt, creatine, seeds, berries. The same thing, in the same order, every day. Over the holidays, mornings began with whatever was in front of me.
Cecili is in Brevard with two of the dogs. I'm in DC with the other two, holding down the house, managing Emerson, fielding work across Wider Circle, Ask Claire, Georgetown, and GenMAV. Piper is here, but she keeps to herself. Solo parenting is not a dramatic phrase. It is a logistics problem that compounds quietly.
Emerson is dealing with health challenges that make daily structure harder. I won't say more than that. But the weight of parenting a teenager whose needs exceed the standard playbook is not something you solve. It is something you absorb.
On top of that, both of our parents are navigating health issues. Cecili's mom had surgery on December 29, the day after we left. My mother is facing her own decisions. The weight of watching your parents age while managing everything else is not a discrete problem. It is ambient load.
The bike has not been touched.
I'd been thinking about friction as something you design into a system. January is a reminder that it also designs you back.
There is a version of this post where I reframe all of this as growth. Where I find the lesson, name the insight, tie it back to design with a bow. I'm not going to do that. Not this week.
This is what load looks like. Not catastrophe. Not crisis. Just the slow accumulation of demands on a system that was built for different conditions.
Most systems don't fail from a single shock. They fail when the baseline shifts and nobody adjusts.
The baseline has shifted. The question now is whether I adjust or just absorb.
I don't have the answer yet.
But I know the bike is right here. And I know the yogurt is back in the fridge.
That will have to be enough for now.
Ken Wake is the author of Thinking Design (forthcoming) and a Professor and Entrepreneur in Residence at Georgetown University. His work explores systems, technology, design, and meaning. Tour de Ken is his weekly log.
