Ron Swanson, Leslie's boss and a bastion of common sense in the over-dramatic, esoteric world of city government, pulls Leslie aside and tells her a lesson he learned as a boy:
"Never half-ass two things; whole-ass one thing."
Despite considering myself a political person, I realized that I seriously lacked hands-on campaign experience. A hyper-local, party-specific race seemed like the perfect opportunity to get that experience while getting more involved in the DC Republican Party -- something I wanted to do since I changed my residency and registration.
What started as just going door-to-door and handing out lit grew into making phone calls and putting together mailers and coordinating volunteers for events and Election Day. A week before the election, I started to wonder what the heck I had gotten myself into -- had I gotten in over my head?
It was then that I realized I'd been half-assing too many things and not whole-assing enough. I'd been juggling the campaign, my day job, moving into a new house, keeping up with friends, running my own campaign for DCYRs, and dealing with burgeoning romantic prospects, among other things. The beauty of juggling, however, is that you have no choice but to be disciplined when you have so many balls in the air.
Once I stopped worrying about things that didn't matter and started pouring all my energy into the campaign, things miraculously started coming together. Election Day came and went -- much to the credit of Starbucks Doubleshot and Clif Bars -- and my candidate prevailed! Amazing what can happen with enough dedication, right?
So with that over, it's time to pick up a couple of the balls I dropped during the past few months (i.e. this blog). Hopefully my new subscription to Garden & Gun arrives soon ...
