(Just saying hello again to our evening readers. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
I'll begin this post by saying that there's no particularly easy way for me to explain everything I've felt about politics and life this year. I'm sure you've noticed that I've all but stopped posting on a regular basis on Burnt Orange Report and to an extent, I apologize for that. But given that it is coming up on my personal 7th Anniversary of officially writing here, I suppose it's better to have stepped away from politics for a while rather than to have burned out completely which, in this year, would have been easy to do.
Writing this post is as much for me as it is for the Burnt Orange Report community. So with that I offer the following as an update of where I was, where I am, and what the future may hold.
The Backstory
I think it was about a year and a half ago in partnership with fellow writer Matt Glazer that I began thinking about where I wanted to take Burnt Orange Report. Out of that discussion came the establishment of the first BOR office on East 5th Street in Austin. A number of months later we upgraded those offices in the same building alongside the establishment of Matt's new company GNI Strategies. While the beginning of great ideas for BOR, it was the start of the clock that has been continually running on my vision to redevelop this site. Similar to the TexBlog PAC which had a lot of great ideas for the cycle, things never really happened as planned. As a result, this past June I made the decision to discontinue BOR's office space when GNI Strategies was looking to expand. Once again BOR went virtual.
A Changing Outlook
I guess it was sometime in late spring, after the primary as well as my dad's successful election as Mayor of Fredericksburg that I began to think about what was next for me in politics. Unlike the previous three cycle, I didn't have any candidates I was particularly looking to work for or support- not that I needed to since I was working for ActBlue.
And as the summer wore on, my outlook on politics, especially Texas politics soured. Development deadlines for the next generation of this site slipped and while other writers were excited and hopeful about electoral outcomes, mine was decidedly pessimistic. I found it a bit incongruent to express my negative & contrary opinions on politics at the same time that I was supposed to talking to people about the awesome new ideas of what BOR was going to do and why they should support the development of that. So as a result I did nothing, discontinued our office space, and largely stopped writing with the philosophy of "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". (I'll admit, that's a terrible philosophy for someone who started writing because of antagonistic reform oriented politics. I totally caved to 'The Man' on that one.)
Employment?
For those who don't know me well, my passion for politics is only about a decade old. Yes, for someone that's turning 26 next month that's still a big chunk of my life, but growing up my interests were space and science. If not for the aftermath of the 2000 election I very easily could have ended becoming a total nerd and/or geek, gone to MIT, and fulfilled my destiny to be the first man on Mars. (Come on, Armstrong on the Moon, Musselman on Mars... made sense to me). But I ended up tracking into UT's Government program where I later discovered (too late) a love for urban studies, GIS, maps, data, and geography in which I ultimately minored.
All that's to say, as much as I love politics, it's been in my life plan at some point to return to college and do graduate work in the urban studies/geography world. So when I started feeling the way I did about politics, I started wondering if the time to change directions had come prematurely.
These thoughts culminated with a mutual agreement last week to take leave from my primary employer ActBlue through the remainder of the election cycle. So while I'm 'unemployed' as of today, it's a bit of a misnomer. Many political operative types are self-employed and go through periods of random income levels throughout the year. This decision is actually an opportunity for...
The Future!
Yes, the future- the stuff that matters! I've decided, after a number of frank conversations with writers, colleagues, ActBlue, and trusted friends, that even though November 2nd is probably going to suck, there is a bigger picture here for politics in Texas. After all, with BOR now being a 5-time "Best of Austin" winner and myself apparently one of the Top 50, nay, Top 10 Most Influential Democrats in Texas it's pretty clear that in the infamous words of Monty Python, "I'm not dead" quite yet.
I'm taking time off from ActBlue to focus on moving ahead with the redevelopment of Burnt Orange Report (more on that soon). If possible, I'm going to try to get health insurance for myself for the first time in years and look at expanding that to the BOR staff via TexHealth. With any luck, we'll expand our political reporting and infrastructure and who knows, maybe I'll finally be able to do this as a full time job (because to the contrary of many people's beliefs, it never has been).
Alongside all this, I'm finally going to break down and learn how to drive and get a car. After all, to do a number of the things that I want to in the plan for the new BOR, it just won't be feasible with only my trusty bike, the less trusty CapMetro, and otherwise sad transit infrastructure in Texas.
So while the the lyrics of Sic Semper Tyrannis by Mae may express the lack of hope I've felt about this fall's election, I do have to thank Matt & Phil for filling me with the requisite political anger to return to writing. I also have to thank Mean Rachel who made 5 excellent observations on her 5th Anniversary of blogging; they are all worth reading but I was struck most by her 4th point.
4. If your heart is in the right place, write it.
There's no sense in being controversial for the sake of controversy. But if you feel that your heart is in the right place, don't ever let anyone tell you not to write something. You won't get in trouble for writing about something you believe in, even if it might make someone else mad. And if someone does get mad at you, chances are they weren't someone you'd want to know in the first place.
So I'm back, and while we may not always agree, together we'll build a better Burnt Orange Report and a better Texas. I invite your involvement, critiques, thoughts, and observations in the comments on this post as well as on future announcements about the specifics of how we can make these words a reality. |
