So, it’s official, I fly out at 8:10 tomorrow morning, touch down at 9:22am, make my way over to 430 South Capitol Street SE, and begin my work for the “Democratic National Committee”:http://democrats.org/.
I have a hotel room for five nights, and no scheduled accommodation after that; we’re working on it. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to be doing; working on mining their donor/activist database, probably, unless they decide to put me on something else. I don’t know exactly when I’m going to be home next; my ticket out is one-way.
I’ve bought a ton of new clothes–I now have shirts that fit me well, pants that take into account doing yoga two or three times a week for more than a year (although I’ve still got the pair of shoes I bought in 2000 before going out to California to work for Dorado for the first time)–for the first office job I’ve had in nearly three years. I bought an iRiver iHP-140, to carry the 20-odd-GB of oggs I have on my server at home. I have my Treo 600 and my ultra-dependable ThinkPad T22, which I decided this weekend not to replace. I have Herodotus, Delaney’s ??Dhalgren?? and Susan Jacoby’s ??Freethinkers?? to start me off.
It would be inaccurate to say I’m scared. I’m jumpy, and touchy, and fidgety, and I’ve no doubt been pissing off everyone on the mallet list by showing up for an extended run of throwing Molotov cocktails at anyone who disagreed with me about anything. Or maybe everyone thought it was fun, or at least good street theater.
I hate the fact that I’m going to be away, since I know that’s going to leave Anne alone to take care of our cats, and go to yoga and the Symphony alone. I worry that Tucker will react badly to my not being around, and wonder what effect that’s going to have on his already sometimes delicate condition.
And above all I worry that this whole experience is just going to crush the core of optimism I’ve held onto despite believing that all you really need to know to understand the world is that People Are No Damn Good. I very much believe the principles that I see as underlying our country. I think it can do better, and I’m scared shitless that I might find out it can’t.
