Counter-programming for the winter doldrums is simple: bring the heat, lose the shirt, and go deep. Add a Speedo for extra incentive to work off that holiday padding (I’ve got enough extra to fill the stay-puffed marshmallow man’s costume). Who doesn’t love an 80’s reference? And who you gonna call? These pool pics of the past will have to suffice until such time that I adopt a less sedentary lifestyle.  

The smorgasbord of my mind, rapid-firing across frayed synapses, is like the world’s messiest charcuterie board right now: there is some good shit there, but you have to wade through a bunch of garbage like rosemary sprigs and a jar of weird mustard that’s way beyond its expiration date. (And don’t even get me started on pitted olives.)

That strange charcuterie digression aside, (what is with all the charcuterie references on this blog?) let’s delve into some aforementioned counter-programming since the groundhog has predicted an early spring, and I always err on the side of the rodent when it comes to accurate meteorological predictions. Again, I digress, when all you want is to get to the Tom Daley and Michael Phelps Speedo posts. Hang on… I feel it… It’s coming… 

Summer days by the pool have always been magical, in their majestic laziness, and the way they slink so sensually through the hours. That sun works myriad spells as it crosses the sky, when really we should be thanking the earth for just sitting there and rotating (advice that’s been given to me on more occasions than need to be recalled). 

Summer discovers where the boys are then quickly works to catch us all up in its heady siren call. We listen, we hear, we fall into its gorgeous trance, lured willingly along for the heated ride. Sometimes summer is a soundtrack. Sometimes summer is a Speedo. Sometimes summer is a knife. Sometimes, summer simply breaks our hearts. 

Inevitably, and often with some reluctant relief, every summer must give way to fall, which comes with its own enchantments and glories. 

Some days are still haunted, while others are filled with healing. 

Some days are quiet and contemplative, made of mindfulness and merrily mired in meditation. 

We work our way through all the days, winding our way to another summer again. May it not keep us waiting for too long. 

Flummoxed by the way the world is seemingly headed, I’m left scratching my head and pulling my gray hair out of my head for the utter loss of making any sense of things. That’s a vague, albeit it grandiose, opening statement, and I’m even at a loss for specifics of what made me say it. Well, that’s not entirely true – I have ideas and specifics, but they’re mostly about politics and I will not sully this space with such talk right now. Staying away from the news and the political state of this country is my best recourse for retaining whatever shredded remnants of sanity I may still have at my disposal. 

Rather, the point of this post, and its title, is to illuminate how silly things are when you take a moment to put everything into perspective. When in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, perspective tends to shift in major and unexpected ways. Do not get weary or worn down, and if you do, remember to be fucking fabulous. It’s ok to not be ok, and to let people know you’re not ok, even if there is no solution or resolution. They may try to help, and try to be gracious about that if/when it happens. We are all doing the best we can. 

And so, whenever I feel like the world is gaslighting me, and I find myself getting bitter and angry about it, I turn that old standby phrase ‘What the actual fuck?’ around and switch out the ‘fuck’ for ‘duck’, and instantly I remember how fucking stupid and silly all of this really is. Perspective. Imperfection. Pantagruel. Rabelais. 

Always remember, when all else fails and you long to be something better than you are today, I know a place where you can get away… 

On the morning after a snowstorm, the world is blanketed in a state of quiet unknown at almost any other time of the year. Sometimes there is wind – brutal and cutting – but when there’s not, the day can dawn in almost complete silence. On a morning like that, I will pause before beginning the routine, and look out at the world transformed by snow. There are certain scenes of beauty that can only be matched by the power of stillness and silence. 

When you are homebound by snow, when the world keeps you quiet and subdued, there is the space to embrace whatever healing still needs to happen. Winter, for all its seeming cruelty, will offer many of these moments. In the past, I would sulk and mourn such days, as if I had something more important to do, somewhere better to be. Maybe that’s a passing fancy of youth. Maybe it was more pointedly a fault of my own. 

This winter, after a few winters of practice, I have learned to slow down, to appreciate the way winter rolls, the way it makes for a hospitable environment for growth in the most unlikely of ways. Many people think of winter as the season of slumber, while forgetting that sleep is the often the best way to recover and recuperate from injury and ailment. Healing comes from such sleep, and from slowing down and facing what hurts. 

Facing it, sitting with it, holding it, and, when it’s ready to depart, letting it go. 

Blog years are like dog years, and the life of a personal blog is, on average, remarkably short. That this site has lasted for 21 years is less a miracle and more a testament to my dogged and persistent drive to put down events, no matter how mundane or simple, into words in an effort to understand them and work through them. For the most part, once I write about something I’m able to let it go in some small way, having acknowledged and honored whatever it might be. 

Last year we celebrated the 20th anniversary of ALANILAGAN.com with a series of nostalgic look-backs at what the previous two decades had brought. It was a rare exercise of momentarily living in the past to see how much had changed, how much had stayed the same, and how much no longer even mattered. My favorite writer at the Times Union wrote this fabulous piece about the blog for Pride Month (and I had my typical over-analytical reaction in an entirely-unnecessary navel-gazing that went on for two wretched blog posts). 

As we enter the 21st year of sharing all the nonsense here, I won’t get too long-winded as these other posts capture all the looking-back I want to do right now:

• 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

• Diary of a half-life

• 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

This year, my website is officially drinking age – and perhaps there is some irony in that since I no longer drink. (My generation is still a little fuzzy on the real meaning of irony, thank you Alanis Morrissette.) It is but one of the many changes that have occurred in the life of this blog. More are on the way, and 2024 looks to be a quietly transformative year. Those are often the most powerful ones – and the ones that change everything, always for the better. 

As for what is to come as we celebrate the 21st birthday of this place, I am planning to keep things relatively quiet for the first part of the year, winding through winter in stillness and silence whenever possible, taking things gently. Sometimes looking back can wear a guy out. Time for more tea…

I’m currently in the camp of Swifties – lovers of Taylor Swift – thanks to her last three albums, which I found exquisite, particularly ‘folklore‘ and ‘evermore‘. That said, even I was starting to get a little annoyed at her when every Chiefs game seemed to be an opportunity to showcase her fantics and support for Travis Kelce. At first, it was fun to see the camera spot her, as it was the only person in the game that I knew, then it became wearying. In the same way that the camera would find her dancing awkwardly at some awards show, I inwardly cringed a bit. 

Why? For the dancing part, it was just the sheer awkwardness of it, something my own previously-perfectionist tendencies would have been mortified to witness. Totally unfair, and unjustified, especially when her way of existing in the world – embracing her awkwardness despite the haters – is the more peaceable and healthy way of living. 

For the football part of it, I had no real reason for hating on her, and as soon as I thought about that, it no longer bothered me. In fact, I wondered at my own bitterness for finding fault with someone so clearly enamored and finding joy in celebrating her new boyfriend. Haven’t we all been there? I’ll never begrudge someone who wants to celebrate love. (Well, within tasteful reason, which is what Taylor and Travis Kelce have thus far exhibited.) Haters are gonna hate, and there’s no point in trying to argue with them. 

It does bring me to the point of this post, which came up on social media as the debate about Taylor and Travis raged, and it boiled it all down to something I didn’t even think about as I was working it out in my head:

The good news: it’s late January, and we are almost finished with the first full month of winter, meaning we’re over a third of the way through the messy season. The bad news: there’s two-thirds of it yet to come. Thus far it’s been relatively calm in this mid-upstate-New-York area, and I’m grateful for the gentle way we are navigating these months. On with the weekly recap… (fronted by Brock Grady)…

We tried to bring the heat with these pretty, shirtless gentlemen. 

Beer abandonment issues.

Gay art, then and now.

Send in the Boston clowns.

Pages of hope & inspiration.

Baggy jeans to see us through the winter padding.

Mystery tracks in the snow.

Once in a while, Barbra Streisand truly speaks to me. 

Some daze.

Let us have flowers.

This summer is gonna be LOUD.

The wink of a winter sky.

When you feel like a failure, put on the Fucking Fabulous.

The Selfish showdown between Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears.

Dazzlers of the Day included Robbie Manson, Colman Domingo, Brock Grady, R. K. Russell, and Jack Plotnick.