There are no humans in the suburbs

I've been stressed lately.

Work has turned up a notch in the past few months. The project I'm on was stuck in an ambiguous place for a fair number of months and recently became unsuck. As a result we have to code like mad to get the product out. That coupled with some new folks on the team and I've ended up with a lot on my plate.

My fiancé Karen and I recently began living together. This is stressful from big things such as figuring out what step-parenting is and figuring out how to to be together without sacrificing "me time". It is also stressful from small things such as where in the hell all my camping gear ended up after clearing out the closet so Karen would have room for clothes.

I've got two kids, 5 and 7, that precociously suck up any and all energy you will devote to them, constantly testing the boundaries.

I live in a big house that needs a serious dose of Feng Shui. Sometimes just walking around it is stressful because it feels so wrong. But it is has been a fantastic investment and selling a house is a real pain. The result is internal angst.

Most of these are fun problems. Engagement is way fun, as is engaging work, and parenting is some of the most rewarding work in the world. Even the prospect of fixing up a house to flow better is exciting. But none of this is inherently relaxing.

When I get stressed I frequently think back to an Anthropology class I had in college where the Professor had visited some indigenous people in South America. They worked 20 hour weeks gathering food, preparing/repairing their living spaces, fishing and hunting, etc. The men would go off and hunt in a relaxed way while the women stayed back chatting as they gathered food and such. The balance of their time was spent in religious and social activities. Kids had parents but everybody watched them and took part in basic supervision. Their life was low stress, and they were happy.

I contrast that with where I am now. I'm raising my kids ping-pong style in a post-divorce shared residence schedule. I work long and hard hours that put me, here in the Seattle winters, out of the house and inside or all the daylight hours. I come home drained having focused my best energies on work and immediately start building a new home and new kind of relationship with Karen. In the end I end up stressed and have been getting bad sleep with early morning insomnia for two or three months.

The solution is simple. Exercise. I've done it before (exercise got me through my divorce). Just 30 minutes of aerobic activity does wonders for the mood and prepares the body for a good night of sleep. More sleep means the body copes with stress better.

So tonight I went for a 30 minute fast walk. For some reason I ended up walking through all the nearby neighborhoods with new single home construction. Here in Kirkland, WA smaller 1500 sq. ft. houses on large lots are being torn down and replaced with 3-4 lot-filling 3000 sq. ft. houses with imposing pillars and pretentious fake rock facades. In my entire 30 minute walk I didn't see a single living human being in any window in any of these houses. I was left to wonder where all the people were. Imagine what an indigenous South American might think of all this intense separation between people.

The first and only person I saw on my walk my fiancé Karen as I arrived back at what now my but will soon be our house. Her beautiful curly hair was a comforting sign of life and humanity in the otherwise stark little chunk of life I had just experience. As I entered the house, it felt a little more like home.

I hope I sleep better tonight.