Is it Tuesday yet?

If you asked me two years ago about politics, I couldn't have told you anything except that Bush is a terrible president, and that opinion would have come largely from what other people have told me. But for some reason this election season, politics has taken over my brain and my life and, sometimes, my dreams.

I'm not really sure exactly what started it. Actually, that's not true. I can blame it on two people: Barack Obama and Chris.


Obama, with his message of change and hope and love, has excited a whole generation of young people. The voter age group that is known for being apathetic and looked over is now energized and excited about politics. Obama represents the ideals and dreams of many young people around the country and I was not immune to his charm. I was already excited about getting to vote for the first time, but having a candidate who represented exactly what I thought the country needed made me even more passionate about filling out my first ballot.

Obama laid the seed, but Chris nurtured it. Before last year, I didn't even know that political blogs were that popular. The only blogs that I ever read were music blogs just to get free MP3s of new songs that were coming out. It was Chris who turned me on to DailyKos, and from there I found BlueNC, OrangePolitics, the CNN Political Ticker, Real Clear Politics and countless other political sites. Now I find myself checking each of these at least five times a day. I gobble up their polls and predictions and spit them back out at anyone that will listen. Wanna know how Obama is polling in N.C.?? I can tell you, don't worry.

I even got to the point where I stopped lurking and posted on BlueNC. I ended up getting front paged and put into the header of their website for a few days. I feel like almost every conversation I have ends up in the realm of politics somehow. Lucky for me, most of my friends are into it also so they're not quite ready to kill me yet. If you look at the list of tags on the right side of this page, you'll see how much I have politics on the brain. I even had my mom watching the last presidential debate and talking bad about McCain.

It was fun for a while, but I don't know if I can take it anymore. But I don't have to wait long. In two short days, all the speculation will be put aside and we will know who the next president will be. I remember watching the election specials four years ago and not really caring about who one. It won't be that way this year. I'm emotionally committed now and it's too late to go back. I just have to hope that things will go my way.

But I do know one thing, I'll have a lot more free time after Tuesday. Maybe I'll get back into reading my music blogs more often, or read some news that doesn't involve Republicans or Democrats. I can't just cut off politics cold turkey, but I can lower the dosage to a safer amount. I'm also going to have to find some other stuff to write about on this blog, but I don't think that will be as big of a problem.