Who Needs Sleep? (Well You're Never Gonna Get It...)

My life – which has been pretty crazy lately as it is – has taken a turn into the surreal over the past few days.

Tuesday night, for better or for worse, win or lose, our campaign was supposed to end…yeah, not so much. Instead we spent the night tabulating precinct counts, making projects, and hearing strange tales of ballot and poll irregularities across the district. Well, other people on the campaign did that. I spent the night greeting guests at our victory party, schmoozing press, spinning stories, managing expectations, ordering pizzas (and more pizzas), talking constantly on my cell phone and, eventually, sort of losing it. Just a little. Sometimes that happens when you’ve been up for 42 hours straight, I suppose.

By the end of the night, it was still too close to call. (Not that that stopped our opponent from prematurely declaring victory, of course.)

Ironically enough, Wednesday and Thursday have been the busiest campaign days yet, at least for me. My phone started ringing with reporters around 11, and it literally did not stop for more than five minutes until 4 pm or so. I ate through a quarter of a month’s minutes in one afternoon.

Today at the vote count was the biggest media circus I’ve ever personally witnessed. Cameras from every station, radio, four – four! – reporters from the Globe, more from the Herald and all sorts of other papers, including a strange contingent of little old Chinese ladies from the Asian press. They were adorable.

Oh, it’s lots of fun… and certainly great experience. As I wrote a few posts ago, I really love this sort of thing. Getting to spend the afternoon chatting up reporters at all the major outlets is like Christmas in April for me. But really, how fricking surreal is your life when you come back to your real job, open up Boston.com, and see your pictures on the opening splash page? How weird is it to see yourself (in the background, granted) and your campaign on every channel? At what point does making the front page of the Globe stop being so exciting? (I hope not anytime soon.)

I came home tonight and, on a whim, decided to check on my herb garden. I have carefully tended this herb garden all summer. I planted it with love, I watered it faithfully, I read up on the best way to care for each variety and pruned it carefully. I’ve killed every plant I’ve ever had, so the success of my herb garden this summer is, or was, a point of great pride.

My herb garden is dead. Wilted, withered, gone. That’s what happens when you don’t water it for two weeks. When you stop pruning. When you neglect.

I’m wondering if this is a metaphor. I’m seeing a point, somewhere, in the somewhat near future, when I might get to go back to the rest of my normal life. Where I get to sleep normal hours and cook elaborate dinners and go dancing in stupid clubs and actually see my friends and pick up the paper without looking for my name. Normal life is going to happen again – I know it, even if I don’t quite yet believe it.

And when I get back to that normal life one of these days, I can’t help wondering just a little bit what I’ll also find dead. What bills I’ve forgotten to pay, what calls I’ve entirely neglected to return, what clean clothes I will possibly have left to wear. What relationships I’ve left unwatered for far too long.

This has been a whirlwind of a month. If nothing else, it’ll be fascinating to see where I’m dropped when this tornado eventually ends.