Different Writing Avenue
Writing is never boring, that's my favourite thing about what I do; you never know where it'll take you. If someone had told me when I started down this path six years ago what I would have written about and the adventures I'd have been on, I would've claimed they were nuts.
Yet again I am off on another writing tangent, one completely new to me. A friend and occasional colleague of mine, Mary-Ann, is running for council in the ward she lives in. Over a month ago, she asked if I would be her campaign manager. Always up for a challenge, I answered, "Absolutely!"
Mary-Ann has never run for any political office before and the only political things I have done are vote and watch the W movie about the life of George W. Bush. It is an understatement to say that neither of us had any clue what we were getting into.
The first few days as Mary-Ann's campaign manager were spent doing research. By the end of day #4, I had two bulging file folders full of information about every issue the residents of her ward have been dealing with. We needed to really educate ourselves on what is going on in her area.
Then we started working on her website. We created original content for all the pages to avoid copyright and plagiarism issues and ended up cutting some when the webmaster said we were content heavy. Then we moved on to working on the brochures and signs.
Amidst all of this, we had media interviews to deal with, emails from voters and other interested parties that needed to be answered, more research that needed to be done as issues came up, and other odds and ends.
One day I had to take a break from my word finagling duties and put on my wood whacking hat. We spent 12 hours pounding in 2x2 by 48" stakes - 74 of them in total - and screwing her signs onto the posts. It felt good to do manual labour for a change.
As we head into the debate next week, there are questions the moderator gave us ahead of time (which is awesome!) that need to be prepared for. Mary-Ann will talk for a total of 25 minutes before the Q&A period starts. Meanwhile, the media and public continue to contact us with their questions which we need to tend to.
Once the election is over in another 8 days, I will be partly relieved as it has been a rigorous five weeks juggling my campaign manager duties with my other writing. But I know I will also feel a tad melancholy as a part of me will miss this foray into another aspect of writing.
Ciao for now...