Wobble

I am dizzy with fatigue and starting to wonder if it’s possible to maintain this schedule for another 17 days.

Today was significant for a few reasons. In the morning, Betty and I drove out to the southern end of town to check out a potential staging location. This one was not in an optimal place but was enormous – over 5K sf and an old carpet store – and so assuming we sign the lease on Monday, we will be able to squeeze in my third and final staging location as well as one for Jill, who runs southeast FC. I can now officially stop harassing real estate brokers, which is fine with me. Now it is time to focus on filling out the staffing lists for Election Day. On the ride home, Betty dropped the final ax on Sonja, telling me that she would deliver the news to Sonja in person later in the day, but that I would be taking over for her fully and completely and Sonja would be reporting to me from here on out. In some ways this makes things easier – less tip-toeing around. But it obviously puts more responsibility in my lap right when I’m starting to feel like I’m at my wit’s end. And I have zero experience at this. I can pull it off, I know, and this is the adventure I wanted, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t pushing me to my limit in some ways.

Sonja received the news as well as can be expected. She knew she was in over head - she had said exactly that to me a few days ago and she had even told me that she looked forward to learning from me – but nevertheless it was hard for her to hear. I tried to soften the blow by telling her the truth: that her expertise and social capital would ultimately dictate how well the team performed and that I was only taking over for her due to my organizational and managerial skills, skills no 20 year old could legitimately be expected to have. By the end of the day we had reached equilibrium.

My load is also lightened because today Seetha arrived, a medical researcher from Boston. She is smart, quick, and able, and I intend to make full use of her skills. Tomorrow we’ll have a group meeting with Sonja, Seetha, Tom, and myself to lay out everyone’s daily responsibilities. (This reminds me that I haven’t described Tom, who has been in town from Texas for a week now and has slowly merged himself with our team.) Tom is an older guy, bald and smiling, with experience in Latino organizing. He wears hearing aids and has the unfortunate habit of, when unable to hear, leaning very close and invading my personal space. He also has the off-putting habit of making strange sucking/clicking sounds with his teeth whenever we are in the car together. This is all to say that, while he has driven all the way from Texas and there are a few other Texans in the office who will need a way to get home after the election, none of them have taken him up on his offer of a ride home; he is mildly creepy. He also, by virtue of his previous community organizing experience, operates under the belief that he knows exactly how the office should be run. He is sure – absolutely positive – that our call lists are being assembled incorrectly, that there’s no way we should be having this many people not home when we call. I think outside of a work environment I would find him kind and sweet, if a little off-kilter. In the campaign however, I want him as far away from me as I can get him. And so because he seems to take the most pleasure out of canvassing, I intend to put him there. There are a few deputy field organizers whose entire daily task is to knock 100 doors a day. Not thrilling, certainly, but better than making calls. I aim to give Tom that same door knocking goal plus responsibility for a few other events we have planned. Sonja will remain in charge of the database, printing walk and call sheets daily, and making confirmation calls to the next day’s volunteers. Seetha will learn how to cut turf for canvassers and I plan on putting her in charge of canvassing on election day. That’s the plan, anyway.

I also feel like I should revise my description of Julie, who forgot to pick me up at the airtport on my first day. That grudge lasted a full week. She remains a little teenybopper-esque for my taste, but as volunteer coordinator she cannot be beat. I have never seen somone convince people to do thankless tasks so quickly and effortlessly. On more than one occasion I have approached someone newly arrived to the office, someone in to buy a yard sign, say, and after ten minutes of failed attempts to sign them up for a volunteer shift I have had to call over Julie and watch her set the hook in under a minute. She’s truly impressive.

Entertainingly, today also entailed a photoshoot. The husband of a friend’s friend writes for a business magazine back in NYC and, having had the idea that he wanted to write about New Yorkers who escaped the City to volunteer politically, found his way to me. He called. I gave colorful quotes. And today the photographer – herself an Obama volunteer from south of Denver – drove up and took a bunch of shots of me with an army of sign-holding volunteers as a backdrop. I was wary, but the digitals looked halfway decent. Strange that I had to leave NY to attain local fame, if only for a day.

And finally, the bike ride. When I was 20 I studied abroad in Stockholm and was placed with a very strange couple out in the suburbs. They were quiet people, not a good match for me. I would take long walks in the bitter cold of early February and I inevitably ended up walking out on a long, skinny, frozen lake nearby. I remember that wind. It was a persistent, searching push. Despite being bundled up as well as I could, I remember feeling as though it blew right around my eyeballs to cool my brain. Tonight, bleary eyed from data entry, I biked home into a similar wind blowing off the foothills. It was not nearly as cold as it has been, but I was without my down vest since today reached the low 70s. And just like in Sweden, the wind grew curious, finding that seam between my eyeball and my drowsy lid, pushing its way into my brain and cooling me off.

I have been trying for the last few nights to make it into my hosts’ driveway without touching the handlebars, a precarious quickstep dogleg that involves a dip in the road and various parked cars. Tonight was as close as I’ve come, but I suffered a lack of speed at the end and wobbled out of control. I suppose it’s important, when burdened with serious goals, to make silly games for myself. To keep perspective.