Fog brings conflicting memories to my mind. My earliest recollection of it stems from walking to McNulty Elementary School as a child, and taking a shortcut by cutting across a field. On certain fall mornings, the fog would be thick, and if we took the shortcut too soon we risked being engulfed in the middle of a field with no discernible landmarks for direction. A certain panic would sometimes set in when that happened, as much as the fog otherwise felt like a comfort. The group of kids with whom I walked didn’t always listen to me, and there were bound to be arguments about which direction we should take. That’s the memory of consternation, but the worry was mostly because it was affiliated with school.

The other memory I have is of a holiday excursion with my brother through the backroads of Galway, where we made a lunch-time stop at the Cock & Bull around Christmas tree season. It was, from what I now only dimly recall, a casual, flippant trip – unplanned and on the fly, which is much more my brother’s style than mine, and on this day it was one of those happy perspective-altering events that illuminates my fallacy in thinking there are definitive right and wrong ways to do everything. 

In winter, I welcome a fog. It usually indicates kinder temperatures, and hints of spring. 

It takes a singular sort of obsession to embark upon a search for self and then to do it for all the world to see for the last two decades, but such is the predicament in which I’ve placed myself since 2003. This year marks the 20th anniversary of my personal website, ALANILAGAN.com. The mundane happenings of a gay Filipino-American who got married to a police officer, worked through a career with the state of New York, and managed the shifting dynamics of a world increasingly besieged by atrocities has been as dull and unremarkable as it has been vital to providing the baseline of this website. Why have I done it for all these years? To leave a trail of breadcrumbs, I suppose, for anyone else looking for a way out, and maybe a way in. 

Looking back over such a long period of time, I’m able to see the greater arcs of shifting perspectives and outlooks that comprises one’s online life. Comparing the 2013 Year in Review posts (here and here and here) with this past year’s reviews here and here, it’s startling to see how much has changed – and how much hasn’t. 

Two decades of any website is an accomplishment, and given the typical shelf-life of a personal blog it’s an eternity. Keeping a small, loyal audience that has ebbed and flowed has proven an interesting exercise, and evolving in such a public forum while the social media world assembled itself and came into existence (then turned into a force greater than any of us could have imagined), is part of what keeps me doing this: it’s been a mainstay in an ever-changing online world.

This has been a search to find myself. A quest to find some meaning in a world that made less sense by the day. It’s been a journey to reach an understanding. I sought a better version of myself in all this HTML coding. I looked for me in all the poses and posies. I looked for me in the music that touched my soul, in the art that moved my heart, in the cadence and choice of words that I found to best express the person I needed to see – the person I needed to find. 

When I think back to 2003, the world feels like a very different place. It was a time before social media as we know it. There was no FaceBook or Twitter or Instagram or Tik Tok. It was a time when blogs were taking off, and I rode that wave rather quietly and below the radar. Other sites seemed to burn as brightly as they did briefly, whereas I wanted to last. I wanted a little legacy. Today, that legacy is a website that’s been around for twenty years. 

In many ways, I feel more lost than I did twenty years ago, but it makes more sense to be lost now – in the admission of that ignorance is the beginning of some kind of grace and understanding. A little closer to the truth, a little closer to the self. And so the work continues… 

Officially, I opened the doors here in March of 2003, so the official celebration will be marked closer to that date. Until then, join me for a cup of hot tea… 

Putting a pot of water on the stove, I asked if my niece wanted a cup of tea. 

“We don’t drink tea, Uncle Al,” she replied. “We’re not… old.”

From the mouths of babes, indeed.

Despite the fact that I walked circles around her and my nephew as we walked the entire Freedom Trail this summer, I knew that she wasn’t wrong. I was old, or at the very least, older – and I felt it. These days, it’s my eyesight that is deteriorating at the most rapid pace, requiring reading glasses of increasing strength in every room of the house, every drawer of the office, and every car in our garage. I’ve taken to wearing two pairs at once when my contacts aren’t in, and years of voguing have made the endless switching of spectacles just another choreographed hand-dance. The levity in that, and the opportunity for further accessorizing, doesn’t quite make up for the sadness I first felt when I noticed the advancing ocular degradation – because the first thing that became more difficult was one of my favorite things to do: reading. All the crystal-bejeweled eyeglass chains can’t make up for that. 

My age group is going through such things – from blood-pressure medication to colonoscopies to gout – and it’s all a part of getting older. It hasn’t really bothered me, and I haven’t invested my existence with a dependence on physical appearance or youthful exuberance. In fact, it’s been more of a point of interest and study than worry, particularly as I’ve been diving deep into the archives of photos in anticipation of the 20th anniversary commemoration of this website. 

The featured photo was taken almost twenty years ago, in Boston on a winter weekend, while the shot below was taken just a year or two ago on a similar winter day, but decades and miles apart. I don’t entirely mind the differences on the outside, because I’ve been working on the differences on the inside – but they’re worth noting, because as this site continues on its 20-year-and-counting journey, I’m starting to see the arcs and the long-range trajectories of life. Certain things sharpen, certain things decline, and certain things remain the same. The seeking and searching continue in earnest…

A cup of Moroccan mint tea – a gift from my friends in Connecticut – greets this snowy day. Backed by a tray of candles, and the warm light they emit in stark contrast to the cold light of the snowy landscape beyond the window, it provides a moment of hygge, and a happy return to memories of summer. 

My Mom was just lamenting the gray state this January has mostly provided – with none of the bright blue skies against sparkling snow that we sometimes get to make it bearably beautiful. On this morning, the snow continues – dropping blankets of white banked by a gray sky. A muted scene of beauty, silent and secret.

Tea and candles may seem like a small buffer against a raging snowstorm, but they make all the difference. In winter, it’s the little things that get us through, and there’s something quite cozy about riding out a storm safely ensconced on a couch with a book and a blanket. 

We haven’t had that much snow this year, and the gardens are clamoring for some insulation from the heaving border of the thaw/freeze see-saw. For that reason alone, this snow is cause for celebration, even if it has been taking down tree limbs and causing other pesky events. This is nature’s way of pruning. It’s also a way to quiet and calm the world – telling us to slow down and take it all in, to pause and reflect and wonder.

Celebrated openly-gay Olympic bobsledder Simon Dunn was found dead in his home at the heartbreakingly-young age of 35. Without speculating on the cause, I knew that Dunn had been open about his struggles with anxiety and depression of late (see his powerful words in this post), and regardless of cause, the early expiration of anyone is a sad thing to witness. In Dunn’s case, he leaves a legacy of pioneering efforts of the acceptance and celebration LGBTQ people in sports. His last Instagram post is the featured photo here – it went up four days ago and he wrote, “I think it’s time for another photoshoot?!” Haunting words that serve to remind everyone that you never know what anyone else is going through at any given time. Even the most seemingly-perfect people have their troubles.

At times like this I wonder if we are looking out for each other enough. I hope Simon has found some sort of peace, and I’m grateful for all the work he did to push for acceptance and equality, and for all the people he touched in his short time here. 

My niece Emi Lu will be fronting this post, in a coat of mine that she helped pick out the last time we were in Boston. “But it’s so over-the-top and ridiculous…” I protested as I hurriedly slipped it on before admiring the nonsense staring back at me from the mirror. 

“It’s totally you,” she said. And so it was. 

Reactions have been decidedly mixed – a co-worker said I looked like Winnie-the-Pooh, bestowing an unintended compliment on me, while at the supermarket the other night a pair of girls broke into loud and long laughter as I walked by them, while another woman said she loved it and asked me where I found it. Such is the life of an unappreciated fashionista in upstate NY. On with the weekly blog recap…

Hope is a growing bump of green. (No, this isn’t about the birth of Elphaba.)

Tracing the lines of time.

Lola’s Birthday.

Winter’s magical light.

The above-referenced weekend with the Ilagan twins finally happened, and it was one for the memory books. 

A winter boulevard of broken dreams.

Yes, I got Madonna tickets – for The Celebration Tour that was four decades in the making. 

Realizing a lifelong Jessica Rabbit dream in super-gay fashion.

The freshest green is sometimes in a flower and not the foliage.

Summer pining in shirtless style.

Approaching spirituality, almost and always.

Winter in the floating world.

Dazzlers of the Day included Maya Moore, Paul Mescal, Quentin Maxfield, Casey Stratton, and my Mom.