Highs and Lows

In many homes across America there is a ritual for the dinner table. Called "high and low," each family member would describe the low point of the day along with the highlight of the day. It's a nice way to open up with family and to keep the lines of communication open for the good times and bad.

Granted, I never did this in my life, but I like the idea. I bring this up partly because my job is a series of highs and lows strung together into a public campaign. It's much like baseball, no one really watched every pitch but a lot of people want to know who won that day. Our season ends soon, but when you mix everything in with an upcoming trip of a lifetime, your highs are over hyped and the lows are disproportionate. It's not a bad thing, it just is a part of life.

You have to keep everything check when you work in a high-stress, high-reward (and high-failure) industry. There is no ability to let your personal life invade your working life. Some people take this to mean we should turn off our lives during a campaign and avoid having a social life, or a church life, or a family life, or any other kind of life, when you are working on a campaign.

I've been trying to break this mold as of late. Most of the work I've been doing is focused outside of the public, between researching the opponent's actions and the current issues and working on the basic day-to-day operations online. Sometimes I do the pubic stuff, train station campaigning (which I am doing again tomorrow) and parades, but most of that is relegated to a few hours a week. In between, I'm trying to take in as much time with the family as possible, since this will be the last time in my life I will have such access to them, and building a life in Illinois. It's a little hard to build a life on a political salary, but there are ways. Church has been a great way.

I've always said that church is a cornerstone to many communities. Aside from the many theological reasons for church, the greatest reason for belonging to a church is the ability to belong to a community. It's an environment where you can debate many facets of life with great respect for each other and at the same time share in great memories in the most unlikely of places. For that reason, the past couple of months at church have been my high.

The low, of course, is losing a political campaign when your party has held the seat for more than 20 years. But I'm not worried about that anymore. The excitement of what is to come, built from my time outside of work, has really led me to believe that no matter how many times you win or lose, you still have everything you had before.

No matter what happens on Tuesday, I am still facing the best adventure in my life. I'm still taking a trip to do something I have never done before and to provide a new hope to many children in a country where hope has been a fantasy. This is my focus. This is my countdown. Not some campaign deadline or research project. Not some jump to the next job. A trip to a new horizon and a project to work with others hand on. I may have been born nearly 28 years ago, but my new life begins next weekend. I'm getting packed and I'll be ready.