Category Archives: General

This Sunday morning dawned with full sun and blue skies, and though the temperatures did not rise to those of our spirits, it was pretty enough to sustain us another week as we inch ever-closer to spring. Tomorrow is already the last day of January, so we’ve made good headway into the winter. The first part often feels like the worst part – now it’s just a question of sustaining until the earth shifts to catch more of the sun. 

On this morning, with sun pouring in through the front bay window and bathing the Buddha’s tree in glorious light, I sit on the conversation couch (laughably monikered at this point since it’s mostly me just conversing with myself or Andy as he passes by) and read a book on meditation. Some pleasant harp music plays in the background – quiet and serene as a Sunday morning can get.

Outside, the cold remains, but the snow reflects the sun, making the day brighter than anything even the summer can produce. Reframing how we see the world is but one path to happiness. There are always others. On this morning, I’m soaking in the light, the bright, and the winter air. 

‘Comparison is the thief of joy.’

Sometimes I would do best to heed my own words of advice, in this case an ancient adage of how comparing yourself to others robs you of joy and happiness. This has been proven true numerous times, and is in fact one of the tenets of ‘The Science of Well-Being’ course so popular at Yale University. The idea is that whenever we compare ourselves to others, we lose a bit of happiness and joy. There is always going to be somewhere who has more, who is prettier, who is smarter, who is richer, who is luckier, who is fill-in-the-blankier. I forgot that when I posted one of my first Wordle results the other day. I had guess it on the second try, after only getting one correct letter on the first attempt. (If you don’t know Wordle and you like words, look into it – it’s fun, and it only happens once a day so it’s not a huge time hog.) I’d seen others post similar things, and a guess on a second try is always impressive. Yet, what purpose did my posting it serve? The app itself makes it easy, and actually encourages sharing of results. It’s right there when you finish – one simple button to share to FaceBook or Twitter or whatever outlet you deem worthy. And so many of us do share, not always in an effort to impress, but sometimes simply to share. Always, though, it invites comparison, and here’s where I failed. 

My intent was to impress, to wow my friends with what was essentially a lucky guess. Taking credit for luck is risky business at best, shady and deceptive at worst. And comparison is, indeed, the thief of joy. That’s a hard practice to overcome as it’s so deeply entrenched in the social media world. It’s why I don’t favor Instagram and FaceBook as much anymore – they are constantly inviting us to compare ourselves with other people and other accounts – accounts with professional people posting professional photos and an advertising agenda that will always make the rest of us commoners feel inadequate or less-than someone else. 

I’m good at feeling happiness and joy for people I know well – my friends and family who post their vacations or celebrations or 2/6 Wordles – but it’s all the ‘recommended’ strangers and accounts that portray a perfection of life that is unattainable and unrealistic that get me vexed and bothered. Fortunately, that vexation and annoyance is entirely at my control as I can simply ignore and not scroll down. Such discipline is easier said than done, and often the best way to deal with any envy that results is to remind myself of that introductory mantra: comparison is the thief of joy. 

And so I’m working to navigate the online world with better intents and a reminder to enjoy without comparing, to feel inspired without feeling envious, and mostly to get off the damn phone and simply enjoy my own rich and wonderful life.

Growing up and having an old soul made me lean into the aging process, and I couldn’t wait to get older when I was a kid. To this day, I remember the anger and frustration I felt when I saw the sign at the Boston Copley Marriott’s second floor lounge area – a raised section that was the epitome of sophistication to a kid like me – that said in no uncertain terms, ‘No one under the age of 14 allowed after 8 PM.’ I think I was twelve or thirteen when I saw it, just out of reach, and from that moment forward all I wanted was to be older. 

Things have changed over the years, and I figured there would come a day when I wished I was younger, but for the most part I don’t mind getting older. My friend Kevin remarked on FaceBook that I was one of the people he worried most about as far as the aging process went, and on social media and this blog it makes some sense. Visuals and superficial stuff has always been very important to the online version I present to the world. Reality, thankfully, is much different from that, however, and I’ve happily grown into the latter half of my 40’s without much chagrin or angst. 

Here’s a song sung by the incomparable Catherine Russell that would have been perfectly at home in the elegant lounge that didn’t permit anyone under fourteen (and let’s face it, I’d be more than happy to see that sign today). Things do change…

As for myself, and currently ensconced well within middle-age, with gray and silver hair streaming out of my head, wrinkles crinkling up the corners of my eyes, and rings like the inside of a tree trunk lining my neck, I find myself more amused and interested by the way the body ages than dismayed or resistant to it. 

Might this be wishful thinking on my part, and an effort to will myself into easy acceptance? Perhaps there’s some of that. I miss the way youth allowed the body so much more forgiveness and room for errors. I miss not having to take blood pressure pills and being able to eat anything and everything in sight and not going up a size in pants the next month. I miss not seeing the world without bifocals and contacts and reading glasses. But in other ways I’m a bit healthier and better. I don’t miss being hungover or blurry from a night of too much drinking. I don’t miss the mental uncertainty of being young and dumb. I don’t miss the lactose intolerance of childhood or the debilitating allergies of my teens. The body learns and grows and progresses in ways good and bad. 

It may be the coldest week of the year (and the universe doesn’t have to keep breaking the record to prove me wrong) but inside the windows of our cozy home, there were the first signs of the spring to come, and the longer days already moving in the right direction. These are photos of our ZZ plant and a fern – both of which are sending out new shoots to indicate that their growing season is back in effect. 

While the real thing is still a long way off, we are well over a month into winter, meaning we’ve already finished a third of it up. ‘Well begun is half done,’ or some such nonsense, and when you’re in the midst of winter, you’ll hang onto the lamest catchphrases if they give the slightest bit of hope, even if you have no idea how to use them correctly. 

Another frigid work-week began this morning, but I switched things up and had a moment of calm and peace before posting this recap. It’s a trick to ease more gently into the weekday drudge. But now we can’t postpone a moment longer, so let’s get to the weekly recap.

It began with a celebration for Mom’s birthday, to the extent that anyone celebrates anything these days. 

Karel Barnoski came out with a new song and video, ‘November Moon’, that was simply exquisite.

To keep you warm: some cozy reading.

Meditative alignment. 

This website is now nineteen years old. Holy shit. 

The saddest thing about therapy is this…

A shitty start to the day, courtesy of Mercury in retrograde.

Some of us are fragile blooms.

A day of hygge with Dad.

Monday morning matcha to ease into the work-week.

Dazzlers of the Day included Karel Barnoski, Summer Shapiro, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, and Tom Holland.

Reigning on the porcelain throne and taking an early morning dump (which is not my usual gig, though it happens now and then to begin the day) I was lost in blissful non-thought when all of a sudden what sounded like an explosion and a shattering smash of glass sounded right behind me. It wasn’t coming from my butt so I knew it wasn’t me, but it took me several seconds to register what the hell had happened – so loud and startling was it. 

I turned around and saw the shards of the candle that had fallen. It was one of those two-wick glass jar candles – heavy and thick and now shattered on the tile floor around the toilet (and decidedly not the cute little votive now pictured there). I shrugged, finished my business (once my heart settled down and I could concentrate on the business at hand, err, ass) and then realized that Mercury was in retrograde and this shit was going to be the norm for the next few weeks. 

May God protect us all. 

{This post has been brought to you mostly for those people who don’t think I have bowel movements. They’re usually the same ones who think I don’t drive, and live with a sugar daddy. It’s also here to shatter any remaining of vestiges of perfectionism to which I may unconsciously be clinging. Although Rabelais may argue that there is something perfect about taking a crap… Anyway, to those who have a hard time envisioning me defecating, I say scat.}

In all my years of dabbling in therapy, and I’ve dabbled on and off since high school, I think the saddest thing is this little fake potted plant in the waiting room of my current therapist’s office. 

All joking aside, therapy has been a Godsend for the past two years, when adulting and grown-up concerns have made life difficult to manage. I wish I’d seen the light sooner, but I just wasn’t ready, and as much as I think absolutely everyone could benefit from a few good therapy sessions, I realize not everyone is of a similar mindset. For myself, I went through a number of periods when I would feel the vague need for a therapist, but derail the process by trying to find the perfectly attuned person who instantly ‘got’ me and understood what I needed/wanted without me having to say a word. Basically, the antithesis of therapy. I didn’t see the error of that for many years. 

From my very first therapy session in high school, when I sat across from a male therapist and interrogated him about his earring, wondering how the fuck some middle-aged guy with an earring could possibly be qualified to help me run my life, I was a challenging disciple. Part of me knew that therapy would be a great help, but my perfectionist tendencies were in full effect for most of my life, during which I would occasionally attempt another round with a new therapist, all of whom failed to help me make any breakthroughs, and all of which was because I simply wasn’t ready to properly engage in the process. 

What I didn’t see until two years ago was that it wasn’t the perfect therapist I needed, it was the will and desire and drive to take the therapy and work through it. I had to be honest with myself about what work needed to be done, and then honest with a stranger who was there to facilitate that work and help me see things in a new way. When I reached that place of openness and humility, as much out of desperation as out of genuine maturity, it didn’t matter that my therapist didn’t appear as the perfect person to solve my problems – and that wasn’t the point of therapy anyway. It worked because I was finally ready to work. In the ensuing two years, I felt good about my therapy sessions, and the way they improved my life. 

So if you’re struggling with the idea of talking to someone, I totally understand. And I would suggest not giving up, just expanding your mind and opening up to the idea of trying to work through the process. If I’d understood that earlier, or just planted the seed of such a possibility, I could have saved myself years of difficulty. 

As for now, my therapy takes place about once every two months, and it’s become more of a chance to re-align and examine how the process has progressed, discover what more I may need to work on, and check in on how far I’ve come. All good things.

This month marks the start of the 19th year of ALANILAGAN.com.

Yes, I’ve had this little corner of the internet since 2003, when all it held was a small repository of written and photographic work, and some vague nonsensical ramblings of a 27-year-old. Other than my age (eek!) and body (double eek!) not much has changed all that drastically. I won’t be making a big deal about turning 19 – we’ll save this sort of hype and hoopla for next year’s 20th birthday – still not sure how much longer I’ll be going beyond that, though I can’t imagine not communicating to the general ‘you’ – even if social media has largely afforded everyone such an outlet. At any rate, 25 seems a nicer number than 20, so I will likely try to hang on until then, and goals are appreciated here.

Besides, this is a safe haven for me, and such places are becoming more and more scarce. In the madness that this world has become, in the mess that is social media, a site like this offers a respite and reprieve from all that awfulness, where no one is judged (well, maybe a little, but it’s mostly me) and where all are welcome and embraced. I want it to be feel like that for you too, and for anyone who deigns to visit. Hospitality comes in many forms, and hospitality is a show of grace. 

With that, I deliver the same open invitation to join me for another year of ALANILAGAN.com, whatever it may bring. 

‘The Book of Hygge’ by Louisa Thomsen Brits is a lovely little book if you’re looking for an introduction to the concept of hygge, which I’ve been exploring for a while now. It’s essential for giving winter an aspect of enjoyment, something I never quite found before, and once I did it made a miraculous difference. Hygge has a lot of mindfulness to it, more confirmation that this is the right moment for making a time and place for it. 

Lighting a candle, making a cup of tea, snuggling into a cozy blanket, and popping open a book are easy ways to decompress from a difficult day, or begin the morning in a gentle way. Life was once about crafting glamorous and sparkling events, when it perhaps should have been about finding the glamour and sparkle among the daily motions we go through. Those magic event moments were few and far between, but a candle and a spot of tea can be conjured every single day. Isn’t it better to enjoy things on a daily basis rather than once in a great while?

Observance writes the texts of our lives, creating stories to be shared in other hyggelige situations when we conjure the moment again. Traditions and rituals vary from one household and one culture to the next, but the desire to celebrate life unites us all. Through our thirst for connection, our future is created one gathering, one encounter, one moment at a time. Hygge rekindles our awareness of the importance and pleasure of mutuality and celebrates our interconnectedness. It keeps us engaged with the lifelong task of living in intimate and loving relation to the world around us. We pass on the spirit of hygge through the quality of our presence. Ideas and values travel. Through hygge, each one of us can know a sense of deeper contentment that will radiate out from us into a global web of belonging togetherness. – Louisa Thomsen Brits

At the time of this writing, we are poised to get anywhere from 0.1 to 12.9 inches of snow, sleet, and freezing rain, so who knows what mess of slushy muck we will be in as you read this. I’m going to curl up in a cozy sweater and a bed of thick plush blankets, reading and writing, maybe taking a break to put together a quick bowl of soup with noodles. On with the recap…

When all else fails, put on a kettle and take the time to properly enjoy a cup of tea.

A hygge flame dance.

Visions of ice.

The dark and wee hours.

The magic of Miranda Hart.

Paying respect to Feast of the Ass Day, because religion. 

Hello from the other side of the cactus bloom.

A winter of meditation.

My own private social anxiety.

Soup is the sauce of winter. 

A hero’s holiday.

Dazzlers of the Day included Michael Breyette, Nathan Chen, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, and Jerry Mitchell.

After four decades of feeling confused, out-of-place, and like I didn’t belong anywhere, after four decades of trying to figure out why so many things felt so wrong, and after two decades of self-medicating with alcohol and other destructive behavior, when I finally figured out that I had social anxiety it was the biggest relief, the biggest revelation, and the biggest let-down all at once. That such a simple and unassuming issue had been at the root of all that ailed me – all those missed days of school that were as much from allergies and colds as they were from fear of facing people and making speeches – was as unglamorous and dull as it gets. Yet it solved the previously-impenetrable riddles of so many problems that had plagued and haunted me, opening up rooms that my own inability to ferret out the cause had left locked and empty for years. 

When the revelation came to me, right around the time I started therapy, it made quitting alcohol an instant and relatively easy action, even if drinking had become my own lifestyle brand. As soon as I understood how I’d been using alcohol as a crutch to see me through socially anxious moments, I suddenly didn’t need or want it as much. The mere identification of the problem, and all its accompanying offshoots of problems, rendered such a false fix immediately irrelevant. I was smart enough to focus on what was really the driving problematic force: it wasn’t the drinking – that was only a symptom – it was the social anxiety, and my introverted nature. 

Not that it was an easy and overnight fix. As easily as I immediately stopped drinking, I also ran into difficulty right around that time with two panic attacks in one day – the first surrounded by a room filled with strangers at a work meeting at a legislative building in Albany, and the second in my own office building, surrounded by people I’d known and worked with for over ten years. I had to call Andy to pick me up early, and I couldn’t even describe what was happening other than I thought I might be having a heart attack (which I didn’t voice out loud because I was certain it would land me in an ER when I was certain it wasn’t that extreme). In both instances, I felt a shortness of breath, and then an uncharacteristic outbreak of sweat that started running down my back and chest. Initially I thought I was just overdressed and overheated in my fancy vest and wool pants, but the feeling of abject terror and something akin to paranoia made it altogether much worse. 

My absolute ignorance of panic attacks may have been what saved me that day – the not-knowing may have acted as a strange sort of protective device, the same way that not knowing what was happening during my very first hangover prevented me from throwing up. The body simply did not recognize what it was supposed to do at times of such extreme duress. Discussing the incidents with my therapist, we both came to the conclusion that I’d had a pair of panic attacks, stimulated as much from the new realizations as from the uncomfortable situation of being in crowded groups of people and having to interact with a number of strangers. 

When that became clear, and when I understood what to look for and how to better prepare for such situations, I felt some relief in having a plan and a comprehension of how my social anxiety might rear its challenging head. Then COVID hit and I was granted an unexpected, and unexpectedly long, reprieve from testing it all out. 

Since then, the world has started getting back to a new normal, and I’ve been around people, albeit on a much smaller scale, and while I still have tough moments, they don’t feel as stultifying as they once did. I’m also ready to talk about it more, something that helps me, and maybe someone else.

A few months ago I was sitting with my friend Julio while on this wonderful visit to Connecticut, and we were catching up when I told him of my social anxiety and how I had stopped drinking. I explained how intrinsically shy and introverted I was at my baseline everyday life – and he was genuinely surprised. It’s a reaction that happens often, due to my own fanciful machinations on this blog and on social media, and the way that I can, when absolutely necessary, muster all my energy and pizzazz and present a fully confident and outgoing persona, even if it’s the exact opposite of how I most often feel. He thanked me for telling him that, saying that it made him feel better about his own challenges and doubts, and I realized in that moment that sharing such things might help others to acknowledge and feel better about their own issues – and dent the fallacy that is my perfect image. 

Baby steps. Little goals. Bits of progress. Taking the winter a few moments at a time…

“I’ll always gallop with gay abandon, and I’ll always find a euphemism in anything. I’ll always sing if someone inadvertently speaks song lyrics and I’ll always love the word ‘plunge’ – and that is not being a child – it’s just sometimes the world needs to be jollied.” – Miranda Hart

Hello to you! One of the jolly joys this winter has already provided is the discovery of the genius of Miranda Hart. She’s been profiled briefly here as a Dazzler of the Day, but that only touched on the surface of her magnificence, particularly in these early days of winter when comfort and laughter and joy are so badly needed. While her main thrust in the world seems to be in making people laugh and spreading her now brand of infectious hilarity, there’s a deeper purpose if you peruse her website and take the time to watch her BBC sitcom ‘Miranda’ in which the main character somehow manages to find happiness and child-like wonder at the otherwise-harrowing crux of middle age. 

That series took me through the start of winter and introduced me to this marvelous woman whose online contributions are aimed at bettering the world through sheer example. She toils and troubles through life as most of us do, yet she is constantly in a state of progress and working toward making things better. She has a wonderful knack for accepting herself just as she is, of embracing her imperfections and having fun with life and every single moment of it. I need more of that. 

The other night, in a deep dive through her Instagram videos, I came across one in which she told of a woman who had written her and thanked her for allowing herself to let go and dance, which she had not done in years for fear of being called out for looking foolish. Miranda gave words of support, remarking how touched she was, and it was a reminder that some of us have been held back and reined in by our own worry of being less than perfect. We are scared of looking stupid and people poking fun at us. It goes back to the very primal urge of being accepted and loved for who we are, no conditions or bargains or requirements. I loved her advice to simply dance in the kitchen, for just a few minutes, to bring about some brief spot of joyful abandon, some reconnection to the very basic human condition of being silly and child-like, recapturing a state of wonder and carefree exuberance. 

I vowed then and there to do more dancing (because I do still enjoy a spirited romp on the dance floor, wherever that floor may be these days) as well as to begin another tradition of spirited galloping. Yes, galloping. 

“We all have our worries about our bodies and our looks. We just need to make the best of our lovely, wonky selves. The key is never to compare and try to be something you’re not.” – Miranda Hart

An early riser, I’ve always been one to get up long before I actually need to get up in order to get into the offie on time. Part of this has been to allow for the mental preparation required for a baseline introvert to simply face a bunch of people, part of this has been to get some writing and website work done, and part of it, at this stage in life, is simply older age. So here I sit at the dining room table, right at the 5:46 AM mark, having already put my contacts in, made a cup of matcha, and lit a couple of candles. 

The only sound is the heater kicking on, this being the most frigid of mornings thus far this year, and my own clicking on the keyboard. On some days I will meditate to begin the day, but not today. 

Today I will sit quietly and listen to my breathing, perhaps reading a bit from ‘The Book of Hygge’ by Louisa Thomsen Brits (gorgeous little book if you’re looking for a calm read). I will watch for the first gray shades of light to grow brighter in the sky. Maybe I’ll make myself a second cup of tea, something different – hot and comforting to stave off the morning chill. And, most definitely, I will sit with myself, being alone with myself and attending to the joy of being quiet and still – the every best way to begin a new day.