Okay, I missed Monday entirely. I’ll try to do two entries another day to make up, but Mondays are tough.
You see, I procrastinate. Shocking, isn’t it? A writer that procrastinates. Mondays are deadline and well, I’m normally pushing that. In fact, pretty much every week I am.

I try, but when you’re covering stuff literally all day long, both weekend days, stuff gets pushed back. This weekend all sorts of wintry Christmas stuff on Saturday and a gospel event that lasted 6.5 hours on Sunday.

Yeah, writing wasn’t happening Sunday night.

It’s funny though, if I have a major story that happens on Mondays, I typically can slam stuff out so it gets in that week. Or, on the website if it is just too late.

A couple weeks ago, an incident happened at a council meeting and I had it covered within a short time of getting home. Then, other weeks, nothing exciting happens and it takes me three days to write a meeting story.

With the council we have coming aboard, I don’t think it’ll be difficult to be excited about stories and writing them quickly come January 1st.

Small town politics are interesting. You know the people on town council, school board, and the planning commission. In some cases you grew up with them, in others, you have known for years as they are typically people involved in the town.

They run for election, you have to write about them, without putting your personal feelings into it, and even if you don’t, you still get crap from people.

I have been hollered at, called names, bitched about, and had people tell me they were going to get me fired over things I have written. People fuss about what I have written on their Facebook page forgetting they have friended me.

Most of the time I let it go. That means they’re reading, even if they don’t like what I’ve written, they’re paying attention.

It was easier when I lived outside of town limits. I didn’t have to face the people I wrote about just because I was in my yard or talking a walk. Now, we live in the center of town and everyone knows where we’re at.

Yeah, that’s fun.

Still, I love my job, I love what I do. I feel appreciated by the community, most of the time, and I think we provide a needed service. Everyone should know what is going on where they live.
Local politics and government have an astounding effect on our day to day lives. They affect us way more than the President or Congress typically does, yet, we focus on the higher offices. It doesn’t really make sense.

It’s the local government that controls so much – local taxes, schools, infrastructure, water rates, etc, etc. Those things change our lives more than that Senator from Maine deciding that they need to add on a project for some random bill.

Yet, in non-Presidential election years turn out is so much lower. Hell, we elect a governor in Virginia next year and turnout will be low. People got excited this year when 1400 people, out of 2400 eligible had voted.

That is so disheartening to me, that so many don’t use their right to vote.

I’ll just keep voting, in even the smallest election, keep writing about what is happening locally, and hope people keep reading.