Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

For those who may have missed my holiday photo card, here’s a fun reminder, and a scandalous GIF below. The high holiday week is upon us – may your hands be filled with Christmas spirit and all that jizz… let’s erect this holiday recap in the best sense of the word…

Let us remember what really matters in every season.

This President is anything but Presidential. WTF?

Speak softly and carry a big…

The right chocolate chip ratio in a muffin.

Not-so-great expectations deliver happier results.

Virgo: the best of signs, the worst of signs.

All is fair in vanity (LOL at these clowns!)

Returning to ritual and writing in a secret code language.

Christmas Eve was made for sequins.

Therapy tease and breathtaking breakthrough.

Leaning into the holiday mess and learning to love it.

Finally, a necklace with my name on it.

Holiday Druther’s.

Mr. Oud sprinkles a dash of sparkle in his wake, leaving behind a tell-tale scent, and a memory of what was or wasn’t.

Potential autobiography title: Pissing On Shirttails.

My favorite thing to sit upon might be exactly what you think it is.

The welcome arrival of winter is at hand.

The Next FAFO Award goes to a very worthy recipient… Elise Stefanik. A local legend for all the wrong reasons.

Winter wishing well.

One of the traditions that Andy taught me a quarter of a century ago was the burning of wishes on the seasonal equinoxes. It is on this day when we write our wishes/intentions for the upcoming winter on a piece of paper, then light them up for the universe to take up in its arms and manifest their hopeful completion.

Wishes and prayers sent phoenix-like into the sky – and a winter sky is often the wondrous and mysterious of all the seasonal skies. Sometimes you have to look very closely to find its beauty and distinction, but when you finally unlock that that secret, it opens up a world of subtle ambiguous gorgeousness. Shifting perspective is a vital component of enjoying winter; without the cold, there can be no coziness.

This may be the first year in which I am genuinely excited to welcome in winter. We’ve flirted in the past, because it does take a certain courting period to get me to warm up to, well, anything. Lately though, I’ve been leaning into the season of rest and slumber, embracing its icy beauty, and wondering at its life-lessons.

I think it started with the last couple of winters Dad was with us in our old home. To give Mom a break, and to spend time with my father, I’d take a day off from work and drive to Amsterdam, setting up camp while Mom ran errands or just took some time for herself. On the dim gray days, I’d light candles and make tea, then join Dad for whatever black and white movie was on television.

In the early days of his decline, he’d peruse his paper, and later on a worn collection of fake money. We’d amble in to the kitchen for whatever lunch Mom had left for me to heat up, and if the sun was out all the light would pour into the kitchen like it did for so much of my childhood. Back when he could get around, we’d take brief walks outside, but in winter we could only take a walk through the dining room and living room, where he’d pause and look out the windows.

Sometimes we’d sit in the living room – the place of Christmases past, and birthday parties, and extended family dinner gatherings – the space where the most special events played out, and then the most important event of them all: time with my father.

We’d have a few more summer days together too, but it’s those winter ones I remember at this time of the year – and I’m very grateful to have had them; they taught me to embrace this season of slowing down. While the wind and snow whipped around outside, the stillness and calm inside cast its own meditative spell.

This winter I’m looking forward to the quiet that follows the holidays, the way candles can flicker and glow even in the daylight, and the slow shift of the sun as it begins elongating the days. The stark, lean, cruel beauty of tinter – we will take our time, letting the days slowly pass, growing longer one by one…

Finally found a necklace with my name on it.

(Yo, I got jokes too!)

#TinyThreads

“How are you doing?” my therapist asked as I sat down on her couch for an extra holiday-edition of therapy. I’d scheduled it anticipating the usual emotional mayhem, but strangely found myself without much to talk about, mostly because I’d dealt with and addressed what had been bothering me directly as it came up.

“I’m doing pretty well,” I began. “And I’m surprisingly not stressed out at all over this holiday season.”

“Well, you’re the only person who has said that to me!” she replied.

I consider that some sort of therapeutic breakthrough – in addition to some genuine progress in how I’ve reached at this stress-free moment of living. Arriving at the final weeks of 2025, in the year that found me turning fifty years old, one of those indelible light-bulb revelations of understanding lit up in my head – the kind that, once ignited and seen, can never be turned off altogether or forgotten. It’s rare to have such moments, and even rarer to realize them as they are happening. It’s also not something Ive fully processed or formulated into words – similar to the way I stopped drinking, which hinged on a internal realization, and, more importantly, a deep and profound understanding of and connection to that realization.

This time around the lesson/revelation is a simple but powerful one – that we are in complete command of our world. Not in what precisely happened to us on any given day – we don’t always have a say in what the world doles out – but in how we react and deal with whatever happens.

That’s right – whatever happens.

If it’s not impressing you with the weight and magnitude of what that means you may be like I was for the last fifty years; I knew it in some abstract, universal truth sort of way, but never truly made the connection until recently.

There’s so much more to say on it, and I’m not equipped or able to do that here. Not yet. It is, however, the ideal launching pad for a brand new calendar which quickly approaches, and we head into our 23rd year here at ALANILAGAN.com…

Writing these blog entries used to be accomplished almost entirely on my lap-top, directly into my antiquated WordPress set-up. That still happens, especially for the shorter ‘Tiny Threads‘ or ‘Dazzler of the Day‘ featurettes, but lately I’ve returned to writing these out in old-school cursive (a dying art), filling notebooks that have long been blank, gifts from dear friends, finally being utilized. In the same way that I’ve returned to writing in a nearby cafe, so too have I returned to longhand writing, in the ancient art form of cursive. (It’s like a whole secret and indecipherable language that the young people cannot even read.)

This is more than a return to physical habits and placements, it’s a return to a profound ritual that has informed my life and always worked to help me figure things out during times of doubt or uncertainty. (The more honest I am with myself, the more these moments tend to materialize.) And so I write, letting thoughts become words, and words fall onto and fill paper. There is something more meaningful about writing these words out by hand – a greater connection between mind and body that creates some sort of covenant between what my head thinks, what my heart feels, what my hand writes, and how my intentions are put forth into the universe.

More practically, this format also tends to improve my writing in a technical sense. When I enter blog posts directly into a lap-top, it instantly appears perfect and finished, giving the very misleading look of completion to it. When I write this out on paper first, it can be messy and jumbled and incomplete, with crossed-out words and phrases, arrows to re-order ideas, and all sorts of raw and unedited mistakes. When forced to type it all out again, I am able to edit and ideally improve on what I might just have otherwise go live because it looked good enough.

There is always room for improvement, and often that does with looking at the same thing in a very different way. It’s practice, and honing, and accepting the ideas that while nothing is perfect, the notions of betterment, of learning, of seeing opportunities of evolution, all exist – a helpful reminder that the work will never be done. What a happy and reassuring thought for all of us who enjoy a challenge and a purpose: the work will never be done.