It’s so hard to stop. For the past few hours, I’ve had the election results pages on the Chicago Tribune and CNN websites (as well as Wired’s Election Party site) on constant refresh. Even when I know there’s not going to be any significantly new (or, from my perspective, good) news coming in, I keep checking back.
(In the writing of that paragraph, I hopped back over to those sites three times because, y’know, something major could’ve happened in those five minutes…)
These are the times when it’s exhausting to be a politics junkie. For me it goes back to what I was writing about on Sunday; I love the story of election night. It’s got everything: suspense, foreshadowing, unexpected twists, memorable characters. Following these results is very much the same feeling for me as staying up until 3 a.m. with a book I just can’t put down.
Tomorrow the hangover will come. In part, it’ll be an “I stayed up too late, keeping my brain engaged for too long” hangover, and that’s the enjoyable kind. But the rest of it will be from the realization that, for all that energy expended tonight, the story isn’t over. All this, that seems like the denouement of a narrative I’ve been following for months, a narrative that surprises you with one more chapter every time. Sometimes it gets to the point where I expect Falkor to fly by my window at any moment.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s fun to try to guess what the next part of the story’s going to be. Will there be harsh compromises? Will there be complete gridlock? Will Joe Lieberman threaten to switch his caucusing party and shift Senate control to the Republicans? (Okay, that last one was a little über-wonky. I’ll dial it back a notch. And I don’t think the numbers will wind up supporting that scenario anyhow, so it’s a moot point.) I love thinking about this stuff…but it also makes me very tired.
Which I guess is a point of admiration to those professionals out there who have to keep coming back, day after day, and pay attention to this stuff all the time. It sure as heck isn’t a job I’d want.
But for now, it’s just hitting midnight, and I need to wrap this up if I’m going to make my posting-on-Tuesday deadline. So I’m going to post this, take one last look at the returns, then shut down the browser and go to bed. And tomorrow, I’m going to try to think about politics not at all.
Maybe instead, Falkor can take me for a ride.
