“A family must never be a topic of conversation.” ~ The Dowager Countess, ‘Downton Abbey’

A more fitting quote could not have been conjured as I sit here on a Sunday night watching the Season Premiere of ‘Downton Abbey’. Following a day – well, a month – of family issues, I was on the verge of purging all that’s been going on, and writing it all out here, but they aren’t my issues at stake, and not my place to speak of them. Sometimes it’s good to have a reminder from a Dowager. Sometimes I’m too blunt, too coarse, for my own good. For the good of others too… perhaps more-so.

And so I find relief and escape in the fading aristocracy of a family, and world, very much removed from my own. A soap opera with British manners, and Dame Maggie Smith – I’ve missed this. It’s so much nicer when the intrigue and the drama is made-up – even if what goes on there mirrors what is happening here. Properties come under peril, histories come under scrutiny – the language of a family is rife with particular dialects, subtle nuances, tricky traps, emotional minefields, and hidden pockets of hurt. You can change almost everything about your life today – your friends, your lovers, your husbands, your wives – but you cannot change your family. A lot may have shifted in the world since the time of ‘Downtown Abbey’, but that much remains the same.

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of www.ALANILAGAN.com, we have posted my last five Projects on ‘The Projects‘ page. Way back in the beginning, when I started all of my sinning, ‘The Projects‘ were the impetus for getting online – a repository of written and photographic work that the world could peruse. A decade later, they are still the main outlet for my creative passions, the works where all my energy, anger, desire, joy, and sorrow find release. If you’re lucky, you can find redemption in expression, and salvation in sharing. Like so much of the world, we recall most recent events first, and so the order of The Projects begins with the last project I did:

I invite you – nay, implore you – to take your time with these Projects. Bookmark them and come back if you can’t do it right at this moment – as they are the heart and soul of this website, and they are the work of which I am proudest, the work into which I poured everything I had. Some artists want money. Some artists want acclaim. Some artists want applause. All I ask is that you look, that you read, and that you take a little piece of me with you when you go.

Ten years ago my body looked like that.

And ten years ago I started www.ALANILAGAN.com.

Obviously, a lot has changed for both.

This month marks the tenth anniversary of this website. Back in January of 2003, we first opened the portal into my unruly patch of the internet – two months prior to its scheduled opening (thank you, Pat Troy) – and since then I’ve never looked back. At the time, it was nothing like it is today. There was no daily blog, there was but a scant collection of Photographs, and my Projects were in-flux and too ponderous to properly post in full. All I wanted back then was a repository for some of my work, a place to which I could point whenever someone asked me what I did and ‘Keyboard Specialist 1’ failed to encompass it properly.

Ten years later, an eternity for a personal website, I am taking a moment to give myself, and those who have helped out so graciously throughout the years, a little pat on the back. Look at The Projects. Check out The Pictures. Read The Writings. We’ve come a long way. I now post an average of three posts a day, occasionally less, and often more (catch us on a day like Super Bowl Sunday and you’re likely to see multiple posts on cocktails, jockstraps, Madonna, shirtless football players, and guys in their underwear – all in honor of America’s favorite game.) That goes seven days a week, 365 days a year. You know those other sites that take weekends and vacations off? I don’t. When I’m out of town, I have posts programmed. When I go out to a party on Friday night, knowing it will be a rough Saturday, I make sure to have something set up before I sip my first cocktail. It takes a lot of work to make it look easy. Why do I bother? Because I know what it’s like to visit your favorite website and not have an update in days, weeks, months, and I would never want to do that to someone who is good enough to stop by and give me a moment of their time.

I don’t get paid for this. I’ve never received one dollar for doing what I do here, and I never bothered to seriously look into that because it’s always been a labor of love, a creative outlet worth ten times the amount in therapy. There may come a time when ads start popping up (and if any advertiser wants in and can figure out how to get it all set up, shoot me a message) but even that won’t change the commitment and promise I’ve made to you. You’ve seen me through some of the most difficult, and some of the most happy, moments of my life. In ways, you’ve seen me through more things than my closest friends and family have, simply by being here more than any of them have, and that’s a strange and wonderful thing.

I’d like to thank the ongoing cast of characters that wanders in and among my online world here, including my  husband Andy, my parents, my brother, my niece and nephew, and the friends who have become like family – Suzie, Chris, JoAnn, Kira – as well as the webmasters who have kept this site going when I thought HTML stood for something, well, decidedly different than what it does – Pat Troy, who started it all, and Skip Montross, who made it into what it now is. I couldn’t have done any of this without all those people, and more. You would be part of that more – yes, you, who are reading this now and wondering if I mean you – I do. It always falls short when all I can muster is a ‘Thank you’, but it’s a heartfelt one, because as much as I want to believe I could do this alone, I couldn’t. Nor would I ever want to – this journey we’re on is meant to be shared.

With that, I invite you to relax, pull up a chair and a favorite cocktail, and settle in for another year of www.ALANILAGAN.com.

It is at this point where we take a brief pause and prepare for the tenth anniversary of this website. Work has been completed on retooling things for just such an occasion, and we are ready to begin the celebration just as soon as some minor housekeeping is finished. For the moment I need a little break. Hence the shirtless pics and the buying of some time while I sleep in and greet the day when I’m good and ready. Trust me, the wait will be worth it. Get ready for ten…

Matchy-matchy is rarely a good thing, as seen in this coat/hat combo.

They aren’t the biggest fruit in the Winter bowl, but they carried just enough color to catch my eye, especially when highlighted by the white of the snow and set against the pale blue of the sky. If my memory of spring blossoms is true, these are cherries. Not the kind you eat (and even the birds seem to have left these largely alone), but the ornamental sort grown for their blooms and foliage.

You have to look a little harder to find such color in the Winter months, and by March these will no longer be half as bright, but for now they’re up, dangling in the wintry sky, daring the wind to take them away.