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…
