moving

I didn’t know if I was ever going to write in this blog again, until just this moment.

I am moving tomorrow. Or the next day. Everything, as usual, is in flux. No, not usual. The last six months have been, by far, the most unsettled of my life. I have not had my own bed since June. I have lived out of a suitcase since June too, and not known exactly where I would be in a month, or what I would be doing there. Now my life is finally reordering itself. Tomorrow I am going to talk to my former boss about coming back to work full time. Tomorrow I am going to move my meager belongings into my beautiful new apartment. I am getting (almost) everything I wanted, when I was far away and dreaming of this moment. But no matter how happy I know I am, it is still difficult, the process of moving. I made a point not to really unpack in my current apartment – where I have been since the beginning of December – but still looking around my room at the piles I have created in lieu of shelves, I grow panicked, thinking of repacking it all away. I am only moving across town. I am going to live with wonderful friends, whom I love, in a neighborhood I love, in a beautiful apartment with plaster cherubs in the corners and fanciful chandeliers. I am thrilled. I am also shivering with tension. It’s almost impossible, facing an enormous task like beginning a life again, to imagine how quickly it will pass, how soon I will be on the other side, living the life I am (re)creating now.

success!

Today, I worked for Barack Obama. Okay, so my work consisted of merging spreadsheets and making contact lists, but in some small way, it will help Barack Obama be elected president. Hurrah!

Yesterday I went to Philadelphia to visit a friend of mine (whom I met while going door-to-door for the DNC in 2004). We talked for hours, I met her boyfriend, saw their adorable red-brick house, and slept on their futon. This morning, after getting coffee, I went to Obama HQ.

I was a little nervous, the way you (or at least I) get before any meeting with people you don’t know. Even though I was going to offer them my help, free of cost, I had butterflies at the thought of walking into a strange environment. The door to the office was covered with “Welcome! Come on in!” signs though, so that helped.

Of course my fears were unfounded. A young woman inside welcomed me and I explained that I wanted to work a few days a week, and I was pretty open to doing anything. She called someone and then told me that the Youth Vote campaign really needed help, and she took me to the state headquarters (the location is a secret so that it doesn’t get overwhelmed by people wanting to give campaign officials their feedback). There I was immediately put to work making contact lists, which took me longer than it should have – I have forgotten how to use Excel. My boss was obviously overwhelmed; every task and conversation she had over the two hours period I was sitting at a desk with her was interrupted multiple times. Before she ran off (late) to a meeting, she told me that going forward I could take charge of a mini-project, or several, or I could just come in and do admin, whatever worked better for me. Real work! Hurrah! It’s interesting too, she’s organizing college and high school campuses, which is great fun – lots of enthusiastic volunteers, lots of opportunity to make an impact.

When I went in to the office I was thinking that I could go to Philadelphia a few days a week, and then spend the other days in New Jersey. The problem is that I don’t have a car, so getting back and forth is a big pain and expense. Plus, there’s really not that much to do for the campaign near my grandparents’ house (and New Jersey is not a swing state, so the work here is a little less urgent). So instead I’m going to try to find supporter housing in Philadelphia and just stay there (maybe with jaunts to NY or NJ for weekend visits, if I have time). They clearly have a lot I could help with there, and Philadelphia seems like a cool city. I just need to find a place to live where the occupants don’t mind me using the kitchen, so I can keep expenses to a minimum.

The moral of the story is: go to the office. I have been sending my resume and emailing everywhere, but everyone is too busy to reply. The way to get involved is just to be there. So now I need to be in Philadelphia.

they say san francisco is strange

I always forget how otherworldly my grandparents’ house is. Not just their house: their whole lives. I went to the tennis club today to watch a tournament between students from Yale, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge. (And when I say “the tennis club” I mean one of the oldest lawn tennis and cricket clubs in the United States.) Whites (white clothes that is) are required on all courts. All of the spectators under thirty (there weren’t many) were elaborately pretty and well-dressed. Whenever I spoke about the campaign to any of my grandmother’s friends, my grandmother reminded me to keep my voice down, because we were in enemy territory. In short: I have left an urban land of hipsters and hippies for a suburban land of wealthy WASPs.

The weather is glorious here though: seventy-eight degrees, low humidity, blue skies forever. I wish this was the beginning of my vacation rather than two months in – it’s a perfect place to rest and relax. As it is, I am ready to find myself some occupation. I emailed the New Jersey Obama field director, and hope he will tell me where to go. When the subject of my volunteer-search comes up, my grandmother reels off a list of people who have some connection to the campaign, however tenuous. It just takes time to contact these people, and everyone is busy, and will get back to me later. I am trying to hold in my impatience. There is work to be done, somewhere nearby. I’ll find it.

if only I could see the future

So the reason I am in New Jersey at the moment, instead of, say, on Monday, is that I was trying to go to a Camp Obama training session, which I was told would put me on track for a campaign job. The training was Friday and Saturday, and I signed up too late – but wasn’t sure that I was too late until after I had booked my ticket. Now I am here, untrained.

Tonight, just when I was about to go to bed, I received an email from the Obama campaign inviting me to Camp Obama… in California. They are now holding fifteen or so of these trainings, on the West Coast. Argh. If you go to a training, they then send you to a swing state. So I applied, anyway – I guess nowadays flying across the country is no big deal – but I feel very silly. Every step I take seems to be in the wrong direction these days.

In other encouraging news, a friend of a friend sent me a long email about where I should apply for campaign jobs, including possibly Florida (their offices opened late because of the primary issues). I submitted a resume to the national campaign also, just in case they are randomly hiring (which apparently does happen). Fingers crossed something works out.

EDIT: I almost forgot – Biden looks like the VP (still no text message though! boo Obama campaign!) I am OK with this choice though not super excited. I think Biden balances out Obama’s inexperience with foreign policy/McCain’s experience. I also think that Biden is good at attacking Republicans (remember how he dismantled Giuliani with the “noun, verb, and 9/11″ thing?) Both of those are good things. But he is a little conservative in other ways for my tastes, and he has a tendency to say really stupid things. So I am OK but not ecstatic. That’s fine – I was ecstatic when Barack won the nomination, and one super exciting person on the ticket is enough.