I’m the secretary for our neighborhood association (God help me) and our monthly meeting is tonight. I used to take notes on my computer during the meeting, but I switched to handwritten notes, because I found myself transcribing every spoken word (I type fast) and I’d end up with ten pages of Godforsaken drivel to condense. Now I just hand write the important points and transcribe it all. You’d think that this would be harder, but you would be wrong. It’s much easier.
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During the summer, we meet in person, and transition to Zoom in the fall. Last night was our first Zoom meeting since spring, and I forgot how much I hate trying to take notes during a Zoom meeting. There are too many voices talking all at once, and it’s hard to keep track of who’s speaking when I’m looking at a dozen little video thumbnails. It’s very overstimulating. It’s a lot.
Our annual election takes place next month, and I’m one of the three members up for re-election. We serve three-year terms, and assuming that I win, I’ll have served for nine years at the end of this term. Thanks to multiple mergers and acquisitions and force reductions, I’ve never even worked in the same paid job for nine years. And so this next term will probably be my last. Nine years is enough, I think.
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It’s Thursday morning and I’m working at home, only I’m not working, I’m writing because my computer is once again behaving like an absolute jerk. It’s updating now, again, which is good because that computer needs a little bit of quiet time to think about its life choices. It needs to reflect. I’ve been told by the IT powers that be that I am “on the list” for a replacement computer. But I have absolutely no idea how long the list is, or if I’m at the top or bottom of the list. I don’t even know if there IS a list. They might have made that up.
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Every October, our neighborhood association sends out a mailing, with instructions for electing the trustees (that is what we are - we are a Board of Trustees, not a Board of Directors), an official ballot, a SASE for people to mail their ballots, a draft budget for the coming year, proposed changes to the governing documents, etc. It is my job to write the cover letter, assemble the rest of the materials, and send everything out to the 800 or so households in the association. Thankfully, we outsource the worst part - the envelope-stuffing, the stamping and addressing, and the actual physical mailing - to a mailing house. I’d lose my mind if I had to collate 800 stacks of paper and then stuff them into little envelopes.
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It’s Saturday now. I woke up this morning with a very bad headache that got worse and worse. It’s better now, but not gone altogether. The annual mailing and meeting minutes might have to wait until tomorrow. My head still hurts enough that I can’t quite think straight. Or maybe I can’t think straight because of all of this (gesturing wildly at everything). It’s hard to even joke about it anymore. The government is shooting people in their cars while their five-year-old children scream in terror from the back seat, and we’re now one of maybe four countries in the whole world that holds public executions. No wonder my head hurts. The human body wasn’t designed for 24/7 shock and outrage.
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Our next Board meeting happens to fall on Election Day, and two days later, we’ll hold our annual meeting and Board election. I’m only worried about one of these two elections, and it’s not the one in which I am a candidate. I’m pretty popular in this neighborhood and I’m going to win in a landslide. Of course, I’m also running unopposed. And even if I did have a viable opponent, I would not really care if I won or not. In fact, I’d probably vote against myself, just so I wouldn’t have to write meeting minutes anymore.
The point being that my neighborhood election is completely lacking in peril, while the real election is absolutely fraught with it. The Republicans could hold on to the House and the Senate. Polls have been wrong before, as anyone who suffered through 2016 and 2024 can tell you. But that’s not my biggest worry. My biggest worry is that this Administration is not going to allow the outcome of this election to be determined by voters. It's about to get perilous.
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