Hey Team,

I was JUST about to hit (and by hit I mean sleep on) the hay (and by hay I mean couch) when I realized I hadn’t written anything today. I didn’t really sleep last night before catching two planes to New York and of course the sleep you get on a plane is pretty sketchy at best so the days just kind of ran together.

Here’s the update but I have something else I want to focus on: I’m in New York now and at 7am I’m supposed to meet the New York Road Runners on the second floor of the Empire State Building to help volunteer for the race to the top that they organize every year. Hopefully this will result in crossing off number six and bringing me one step closer to home.

Ah, home. That’s what I want to talk about…kinda. Tomorrow (well, probably “today” for most of you guys unless you happen to read this within two hours of me posting it) is “Super Tuesday” and the day that my home state gets to throw in it’s 82 million cents (two cents per person?).

Obviously I’ve heard a lot of different political views in my travels and a lot of people have reason to be eager to see the outcome of these primaries. There are even quite a few moments that have been caught on tape for Amtrekker that are very telling of the current political landscape. I just tend to edit them out for the podcast. I’m also not a big fan of talking about my personal philosophies on politics or religion so I leave that stuff out (and will probably continue to do so).

But here are a couple things that should be mentioned on today of all days.

The first person to ever pick me up hitchhiking said something along the lines of, “We’ve sure made a mess of things. They just aren’t the same. We’re destroying the planet and we’re starting wars…” As you can guess he went on for a while.

We all know my optimism may someday be my downfall but regardless I don’t believe we as a people have done anything we can’t fix. Period. You want things to be better? Make them better. Less talk, more action. That’s my first point.

Also, one of the lines I throw out several times a week when I’m explaining how impressed I continually am with the kindness of strangers in this country, despite the fact that we constantly tell ourselves that we should fear each other, is: “Individuals in this country, by and large, are AMAZING. It’s not until we form groups that we start to screw things up.”

There are two large groups in this country that have been proving my point for a while now. BUT, again, I’m super-optimistic and I believe that we CAN form groups without screwing things up. In fact, we HAVE to form groups without screwing things up if we want to be problem solvers. Finding solutions SHOULD be what we do best. Instead problem solving seems to be coming in third place behind whining and consuming. And whining has a pretty big head start.

I’m just a little guy, I don’t have a lot of clout, I can’t sway opinions, and frankly I’m not sure I’d want to. I like the dynamic of independent thought. (Just so long as people actually do the thinking part.) But here’s my final message.

Bottom line: Go out and vote today. You owe it to all of us because we’re in this together regardless of what “side” you’re on. And just for the record, here’s the one line I HATE hearing the most on days like this: “I would vote but I don’t want to be an uninformed voter. It’s better for me to not vote than to cast my ballot without knowing the details.”

No. It’s better for you to stop with the lazy-talk and BECOME an informed voter. Do your job.

I’m done.

Brett.

Feel free to donate to MY campaign.

Why not?

P.S. I’m kind of dumb.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 11:00 pm.