Just had a nice little freakout at Kevin about what I’ve gotten myself into with this running-for-office thing. Imposter syndrome, we has it in spades right now. I told him how unnerving it was to walk into parties full of strangers and ask them to sign the petition to put me on the ballot. Why me? Yes, I’m reasonably qualified for this particular job, but so are lots of other people, I’m sure, so where do I get off thinking I should pester a lot of strangers into even remembering my name, much less trusting me with this job? How arrogant is that???
And if I do get the job, what if I mess it up? I’m not a lawyer; I’ve never sat down and read through the Village…what? Code? I’m not even sure what it’s called! I was reading the first chapters of _How to Win a Local Election_ this morning, and one point he made was that you need to start familiarizing yourself with the local laws because you need to know them to get elected and you’ll need them even more if you actually get the job. I’ve never read the local laws. I don’t read the New York Times every morning; I don’t even subscribe to it, or the Washington Post, what kind of poser wanna-be maybe-politician am I anyway???
Kev got me to chill out a little; the big panic was probably mostly because he’s been out of town and somewhat inaccessible by phone through all of this last week and so I was saving up all my anxiety to dump on him at once. Kevin doesn’t seem concerned about my ability to handle the job if I get it, and he’s pretty smart and I trust his opinion, so it’s probably all right. I guess.
But still, I think maybe I should start reading the New York Times every morning.
(Note: You don’t need to take this opportunity to tell me I’m great, though I do appreciate that some of you will want to do that. I think I’m calmed down, mostly. Blogging this mostly in service of transparent documenting of the process.)