Fired Up, Ready To Go

The scene in my neighborhood last night was crazy. Virginia was close, too close to call, while the rest of the map turned red or blue, and then they called Virginia blue, and then everyone in Grant Park on the TV was freaking out, and all of a sudden they were saying Obama had won the election, and it was Virginia that tipped it, and it was our hard work that made the difference, he won our precinct by less than 80 votes...

It was a good moment. It was a really, really good moment.



Obama's last rally of the election was in my county, and I worked as an usher... and then ended up sitting behind the stage. You can see me in some of the press photos, dancing and waving my sign around like mad.

He told the story of where that really lame "Fired up, ready to go!" chant comes from. Somewhere in middle-of-nowhere, South Carolina, this little city councilwoman who moonlights as a private detective started it. For serious. And we were all fired up, all 80,000 people there, my friends and neighbors and teachers and Sunday School teachers, all fired up and ready to go and do something good for this country, to take it back and move it forward.

It was a really, really good moment.

I have some complicated emotions around this election, especially the whole issue with Proposition 8, and I assure you you'll hear about all of that in the next week for so. But for now, I'm going to be excited that my first vote, my first campaign, ended in victory, and that now we can start the real work.

I want to stay involved. I want to write my brand new Democratic senator and representative, keep track of what's going in Congress, hold them to all those promises they made. If my precinct was decided by less than eighty votes, than surely my voice matters, and I'm ready to use it.

I'm fired up.

The real work starts now, ya'll.