Head Heart Hustle: What a Wild Thing (Late Election Night Edition)

Head Heart Hustle Herald

What a Wild Thing

August 7, 2018- Election Night

For a sentimental person, you can’t ask for a better prompt than a story with a beautiful plot and an unfinished ending. It’s like reading a great book and lingering on the final pages. This moment is a beautiful eye in the storm of what has been a flurried series of weeks and months of dedicated efforts on the part of many many people that I care very much about.

I am filled.

I do know that I have a chance, and that is wonderful. I’ll be honest by saying that this candidacy feels like destiny. I believe there will be an election that I ultimately win, and I trust myself enough to know that I will then do the work required to honor the gift of trust that a vote represents. And I understand life well enough to know that I will fall short of solving the individual problems of delinquent bills and the collective problems of decrepit infrastructure and the systematic problems of a finite universe with people of infinite need.

Tonight, a little girl named Alina came to my house. I asked her if  she understood what this event was about and she said “no.” I told her that I was trying to get a job to help people, and to get it, I had to go and tell people why I wanted it and what I would try to do if I got it, and I had to hope that they would believe me, and that they would not only believe me, but they would believe me enough to go out of their house or their job on one special day and go to a special place and fill in the circle next to my name, and that the only way for me to get the job is for lots of people to do that very same thing because lots of other people wanted the job too, and the only way I would get the job is if more people wanted me to get it than anyone else, and if more people filled in the circle next to my name than anyone else, then I would get it. But it’s all so hard because no one can see the future so we’re all just doing our best to figure out who will help us the most.

I don’t know what I will do or not do if I’m elected, but I trusted myself today enough to fill in the circle next to my name, because I know my heart and I know my dedication to serve and I know how hard it will be, and it still want to try.

We did the thing that they say you can have, which is a FUN campaign. We did the thing they said you couldn’t have, which is a campaign where you write articles instead of fundraising and have a full time job instead of shmoozing, and take WAY more than 30 seconds at a door because you are engaged in conversation, and don’t spend a damn hour asking for money on the phone (let alone 40 per week). The premise of my effort was to be worthy, do good work, be of service and win by being helpful. I think it could happen. That is the WORLD I want to live in. What if it works, even just this once? What a gift.

Even if it doesn’t, I will say two things. First, I know it is possible because we are very very close. And secondly, that the journey has truly been extraordinary. I have true, deep profound love and gratitude and appreciation for so many people who run the gamut of having dedicated weeks of their life on behalf of this effort, to people who I interacted with for the briefest of moments. Wherever I went today, I met people who literally worked for other campaigns and still supported me in loving and genuine ways. How can that be? I am floored.

The ache in my heart right now is actually not about the results, which will come inevitably. The ache I feel is more about whether or not I will be able to prove to the people who I love and who have supported me, how much I truly value all that they have done.

Then again, if they didn’t trust me in the first place, they would’ve have done what they’ve done, so I believe they will take my word for it. It means the world.

As I write this, I see 14 names and mine is at the top! But there are 8 votes that separate me from the next candidate. What a wild thing it is.

Do you know how many times people have started and ended conversations with me that went a little bit like: “Well, if you don’t win the first time…”? It was a lot. I wonder how many other candidates got that. Then, in the same school of direction, they entreated me to “just keep trying.” They didn’t know I was already full of the right (and the wrong) kind of doubt. But mostly they didn’t know that the continuation of my efforts and my advocacy has absolutely nothing to do with their appeals and encouragement. It is in me, it is of me, it is who I am, it is what I do, it is what I will do. I can only hope I will continue to do it well.

In gratitude,

Your candidate,

Michele