Through the fronds of a Norfolk Island pine, I sit lotus-style as the ringing of a Tibetan singing bowl slowly fades into silence. Outside, a snow-covered world of white and blue sends light ricocheting throughout the room, while the sun itself pours in through the green branches of this little tree – beauty in dappled light reminiscent of summer and sunny days. This is the room and space in which I do my daily meditation – and it’s the moment of the day I find myself craving and enjoying, so I’m slowly going to elongate these sessions as a way of getting through the winter. 

While the floral bombast of an orchid may steal the show for a week or two, and the re-budding of a Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter cactus might shift focus, the greenery of this Norfolk Island pine is something to which I return most. Its green glow in the early afternoon is a happy reminder that the outside world will be green again too; it is a promise and covenant as powerful and reassuring as any rainbow – perhaps even more-so with its consistency and fortitude. 

Here is where I find peace, and shutting out the world is the surest way to reconnect with calm.

Try it – you’ll like it. 

A Sunday night snowstorm with a Monday holiday made for a cozy, comfortable evening at home with Andy. As he finished putting together a pasta dinner and warming a loaf of bread in the oven, I did a meditation in the living room. With Monday off, there were no Sunday scaries, a relief in itself, and this further embrace of a winter night kept the evening warm. As we have done for almost twenty-five years, we will continue to find comfort in such cozy evenings, no matter what madness swirls in the outside world. Sometimes I think the colder things get there, the cozier we make it inside our home. A lesson and blueprint for the next few years…

Our Monday morning recap gets a late start due to the holiday and our 22nd blog birthday entry, and perhaps this will help to distract from everything else going on today. Going forward, it may be wise to close ranks, which will simultaneously bring us closer to those we love while making it easier to defend ourselves against those who would hurt us. Lack of morality is a choice, and entirely non-negotiable. On with a robust weekly recap, and the promise to continue to be a bastion of escape, beauty, truth and love. 

Simmering for the full moon.

Basic butt shots for Feast of the Ass Day.

Top or bottom?

The candle that says it all.

A lonely hunter cries like the wolf.

A brief and very bad poem.

A purple cup of memory.

A silly sock post.

Winter’s insufferable holding pattern.

The edging of the demise of TikTok.

A scathing letter to Carrie Underwood.

Happy birthday to my Mom.

Brand new attitude.

This is me now.

The smallest day.

As I predicted, TikTok was shut down for performative purposes only, and less than a full day. The joke that is our country continues to be played, and it’s on all of us. 

Not responding is a response, and it will be responded to in kind.

Twenty-two years ago this month this website went live. 

In honor of an American hero.

Dazzlers of the Day included Ryan McCartan  and Devon Rodriguez.

Today we mark Martin Luther King Day, and nothing else.

There are two quotes that speak to today’s dim world more than ever:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

“Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

While this year will be filled with far more signifiant numbers, twenty-two years of a personal blog is a pretty remarkable feat, especially when one considers the average age of a blog these days (at last check, and this data is sketchy at best, it was about 2.4 years). That makes ALANILAGAN.com an absolute dinosaur, not entirely unlike its namesake (speeding along to 50 with no respite in sight). 

In all that time, and while the rest of the world discovered social media and technology expanded at terrifying rates, I’ve kept this as a personal diary that has remained largely unchanged as far as basic content and format goes. It was always intended to be clean and simple (though in its planning stages I went broke for baroque – requesting sound and animation and even preliminary discussions on how to incorporate fragrance into the equation, which I accepted a compromise with scented promotional mailings) – and upon hearing the opinions of others, and realizing what blog formats I myself enjoyed, I’ve intentionally kept it relatively clean and spare. Sparing the bells and whistles has allowed me to focus on the substance, though I do my best to dress it up whenever and however possible.

The arc of over two decades allows for assessment of patterns and habits, and the perspective of that time gives one a certain bit of wisdom, not all of it welcome or wanted. It’s hard to face your own failings, and I’ve been staring at myself through the eyes of unmitigated self-expression for so long that I am very much tired of it sometimes. What keeps me going is seeing those infrequent but precious moments of growth and evolution, even if seeing them reveals some embarrassing behavior and opinions of my past. Were it not for so many mistakes, there would be far less learning. 

So here’s to the next year of missteps and atrocities, and putting them on display for all the world to ignore – and here’s to the last twenty-two:

• Spilling the tea for over twenty years

• Sipped or spilled, the tea here is always hot

• Tea tease

• Putting the kettle on

• Prepping for a two-decade salute

• This was 20

• Twenty years of naked titillation

• A cup of tea with Oscar

• Hot tea amid a snowy night

• A Double Decade of Revelations

• The eyes of nostalgia

• Still click-baiting in my underwear

I used to think that not responding to a text in which a specific question and deadline is given is ruder than saying ‘Fuck you’ to someone’s face. At least the ‘fuck you’ indicates you care the bare minimum to respond. To simply ignore someone means you don’t even give the slightest fuck about them. 

That said, it seems to be the acceptable mode of operating these days, so rather than try to fight it anymore, I’m giving in… and not responding to texts. Especially texts that request a response. 

Sometimes it’s easier to be a flake than to fight with a flake. 

(And I still don’t really understand what a flake is.)

PS – This actually wasn’t written with a specific person in mind, but if you think it’s you, well…

First of all, I don’t think TikTok is going away forever – you’re all being played by billionaires and con-men, and when the FOTUS (Felon Of The United States) assumes power and begins his fascist playbook, he’ll ‘miraculously’ save the app while not solving any of its very real security concerns. But if you want to give China access to all your information, you do you. (I put most of my damning nudity and nakedness and nasty stuff right here on my website so if they want to exploit me they can put ALANILAGAN.com on the international map.)

Second, I’ve been around before social media even existed. This very website was live before FaceBook or Twitter or Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok or BlueSky, and as each one works to destroy itself, I’ve slowly disassociated and distanced myself from all of them. If I’m on these days, it’s to post a blog link, respond to friendly comments, and then I’m off. No longer do I engage as much, and I’ve been treading with a lighter touch over the past few years on a whole. 

Third, as someone who’s been fortunate to have a decent number of followers on certain platforms (my Twitter zenith reached 75,000 before it became X, and my TikTok and BlueSky accounts are/were over 6,000, with the latter growing by the day) I can say with certainty that if any of those platforms went away, I would lose absolutely nothing because they have given me absolutely nothing. So when people lament and mourn the momentary inaccessibility of TikTok, I wonder what exactly they have been getting from it, aside from entertainment and amusement, not unimportant things, but not exactly necessities. 

I don’t personally know anyone who makes a direct living off of social media – do you? And while I respect that people have made connections and found engagement with others through social media, in your day-to-day life, how does it actually impact you? Because it doesn’t really play much of a role in my daily existence. I wake up, greet my husband, go to work, talk to co-workers, text some friends, hang out with them, see a movie, take a weekend trip to Boston, attend a Broadway show, plan a vacation to Maine, have dinner with friends, see family, write this blog, cook a new recipe, jot down plans for the garden, go out to dinner with Andy, do my daily meditation, listen to a new song, listen to an old song, fertilize the orchid that is in bloom again, clean the guest room for a possible visit in the spring, work on ideas for our 15th anniversary and my 50th birthday later this year… all boring and dull and banal, and all more real and engaging than anything I’ve ever done on social media. The most mundane machinations of daily living will always be more thrilling than what you think you see online. 

The world is about to get a lot darker, and social media is only going to get worse. Misinformation, lies, and cons have been festering for years, while fact-checking and evidence-based arguments are eroding. This website will always be as genuine and authentic as I can make it – but you are still only seeing an edited and curated glimpse of things (I don’t even want to see my hair in the morning). What works best for me now is keeping social media at a distance, not allowing it become such a part of my life that I get worked up or upset over the supposed demise of something called ‘TikTok’, and reinvesting in being present for the reality of my existence.

When we look back on our lives, I don’t think many of us will ever say, “I had the best time on my phone.”

My morning commute to the office occurs right around sunrise these days, at least on the days that aren’t obscuring the sun. It’s a sacred and usually serene time, with the first flush of fellow commuters sharing the road. When I’m a little earlier, this crowd dwindles, if something in the present tense can ever be in the past, or the future for that matter. Apologies for the game of words, it’s the little things that bring us silliness and joy

A week or two ago, I caught the break of the sun as I careened down Albany Shaker Road. Framed by the road, the electrical lines, and the street lights, it was a sliver of the natural world ensnared by the drab messiness of humans. Best of times, worst of times, blah blah blah… and I chose to embrace the beauty of the light. That very first light of day is a trick less of the sun and more the movement of the earth; we control our perception with greater influence than we realize. To that end, I made the decision to have a decent day. It didn’t need to be good – it’s damn near impossible to have a good day anymore given the current state of the world – it only needed to be decent, and it would be.