Our frail thoughts.

I’m trying to write some kind of post to close out 2025, and the words just won’t come. I should’ve started this post weeks ago. But every time I thought about sitting down to write, my brain kept glancing off the idea. Something about it felt entirely too big, too difficult. And now that I’ve finally, finally started typing, it still feels daunting: I am sitting in my living room, a slowly-cooling mug of coffee in my hands, as I stare at one of the sloppiest blog drafts I’ve started in a while.

I mean, how do you write about a year that’s felt so hard? On a personal level, I lost a very good job I loved; a couple months later, I buried a parent. And amid all of that, the national and global horrors raged. I have no idea how to make one of those things legible within a few hundred words, much less all of them.

Maybe that’s why I’m sitting here, cold coffee in hand, thinking about flowers and dead men.

I spent a good chunk of my final year of college studying elegiac poetry: poems of loss and mourning written for the dead.¹ My thesis advisor and I spent hours talking about their structure, and how frequently flowers were used — frequently and differently used, I should say. As metaphors, flowers are versatile: they can represent metamorphosis and transformation, or act as a not-so-subtle callback to “the flower of youth”; they can even just, well, be beautiful things, letting the author drape a dead friend in splendor.

They can also be a boundary. In “Lycidas,” John Milton memorializes a dead friend by, at least in part, naming an array of flowers — primrose, jasmine, violets, hyacinth, and many, many more — before casting each of them, in turn, around his friend’s tomb.

…
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.

Personally, I don’t think “Lycidas” is an especially good poem. But it does have some passages that have haunted me in the best way possible, and this little litany of flowers is one of them. Milton’s sorrow for his dead friend is really evident throughout — there’s maybe more raw, open emotion from Milton here than I’ve seen anywhere else in his writing. But at the same time, I love the idea that casting wreaths of flowers around a dead friend could be read as a protective measure from death. When you draw a boundary around something horrible, you can give it a shape; you can contain it.

I suppose that’s my path through this not-so-little post. This year was, in a word, relentless, sprawling, and tragic. And at the same time, some really beautiful flowers managed to grow; let’s you and I drape them around 2025’s shoulders.

The year began with planning a memorial service and mourning a lost job, but it also began with something I’m tremendously proud of: a redesign of my latest book, You Deserve a Tech Union, and its subsequent rerelease as a self-published title. I’ll be honest: I sometimes wish the arc for this book had been a little different since its release, but man am I delighted it’s still in the world, finding its way to people doing good work. And if you’ve read the book, or shared it with friends and coworkers, you’re part of the book’s quiet, ongoing success. So thank you, friend. Really.

I was hoping I’d get a few more years at 18F, but going back into independent practice has gone much better than I could’ve hoped. I’ve gotten a chance to work on meaningful, interesting projects with some tremendous clients, including the City of Boston. At the same time, I’m relearning how to talk about the work I do: I updated my portfolio for the first time in years, and wrote about how I approached the process. I’m also starting some new work in January that should keep me busy for the next few months, and I’m feeling incredibly grateful for that. (But hey: if you’d like to talk about working together, do get in touch!)

While I’m on the subject of meaningful work, I found no shortage of it volunteering over at Unbreaking. Back in June I wrote about why I joined the project, and why its work matters. Since then, there’s been a tremendous number of meaty design problems to think through, all while collaborating with some of the brightest, most hard-working people I’ve ever met. I know we won’t web design our way out of fascism. But I can’t tell you how good it feels to bring a few of my skills to support activism that matters.

Additionally, I’ve done some writing this year I’ve been incredibly proud of. A few of my favorite posts:

• I wrote about the so-called “National Design Studio”, and how its tremendous failings shouldn’t be read as an accident;
• I wrote about “artificial intelligence” as an utter failure, save for one especially damaging application; and
• I wrote about what happens when we talk about “the future” in the tech industry.

I remain dismayed by what’s currently happening in tech, and at the same time I’m incredibly inspired by the people fighting for a better vision of it; I want to write more about both of those things. On that front, I should note I’ve decided I want to write another book — a much longer one, if possible. But I’ll share more on that when I can.

That’s a lot of work-shaped stuff, I realize; there was plenty of good that happened that involved doing very little. As always, I got a tremendous amount of joy tinkering with this little website: adding better social media preview cards, or a linkblog. But I spent a considerable amount of time with my wife, with our two little cats, and with our dear friends. I went for long walks and runs in my city, and played plenty of video games. I read several books I’m still thinking about.

And whenever possible, I said hello to my favorite river.

I’ve always loved this time of year. But the hope and optimism I feel for what’s coming is tempered by the knowledge that there’s going to be a considerable amount of work next year, and more than a little hardship. Many didn’t make it out of this year; not everybody will make it out of the next one. But right here, in this moment, you and I are looking ahead together. So here’s to you and I, friend, and to pastures new.

I’m glad you’re here. Thank you, as always, for reading.

This has been “Our frail thoughts.” a post from Ethan’s journal.

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