Ethan Marcotte's Blog

The house is valuable because it is t... Folded between the pages.

49.

It��s been, like, hot-hot for the last week, with Boston seized by the same heat wave affecting��well, everywhere else. Personally I��ve never cared for summer, even before it entered its villain era. And after a few days stuck inside avoiding the heat, the cabin fever had properly set in. So when I saw the temperature was in the high sixties 1 this morning, it felt like the best birthday present. Like some misaligned cog in the planet��s inner workings had suddenly snapped back into alignment, and things started humming along happily.

Naturally, I woke up too damned early, as is my curse idiom. I drank some coffee on the couch, and watched some Critical Role with the kittens until She woke up. Then I opened some lovely gifts, and fielded some calls and texts from friends and family.

After that, I went out for a run.

Photograph from underneath a bridge spanning the Charles River, looking down the length of the bridge. The bridge��s support arches fade away into the distance.

Pretty sure I��ve said this before, but I��m a slow runner. And I��m fine with that: I don��t run competitively, and I really just love getting outside for a couple hours. And whenever possible, I try to get down to the river.

(Fun fact: when you start running along the Charles River, nobody prepares you for the frankly unhinged levels of gooseshit you��ll be dancing around.)

Photograph of two pedestrian paths next to the Charles River, each winding their way through some leafy green trees.

I struck out, running down through Cambridge and across the water. On the way I stopped at the emergency room where I got my diagnosis a few years back, took a quick selfie, and then kept on running.

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I��m entering the last year of my forties, and it��s hard not to feel a bit reflective about the decade I��m in the process of closing. Did some good design work; started and left some jobs; started talking about labor in tech, and wrote a little book about it. There are old friends who��ve moved away, and I��ve been lucky enough to make a few new friends; having dinner with two of them tonight, in fact.