I get by with a little help from my friends

Wednesday morning.

I didn't want to go to class. At all. I felt like getting out of bed was a chore. I knew what to expect: An hour rehashing the election results with a UIS political science professor, then having to write about it, then two and a half hours rehashing the results during a night lecture with another political science professor.

So I texted Luke, one of my new PAR friends: "Election night wore me out and I didn't even do anything. I don't wanna go to classs."

His reply: "You didn't even have to work the damn thing! Get your stuff ready in 20 minutes. I'll pick you up and we can get some caffeine."

It was just the pick-me-up I needed. Luke had been at the campus NPR affiliate all night, so he had an excuse to be tired. I had just sat awake all night with a few other people gobbling down pumpkin pie with copious amounts of whipped cream and refreshing my computer's election results.

I'd been in a major funk for three whole days over not voting, through my own fault. I had planned to register in Illinois, but UIS does little to no promotion of voting. You can't even register at the school library, and I was stuck on campus all day on the deadline.

When that passed, I decided to mail in an absentee ballot application to Ohio. I got as far as saving a .pdf of the application on my flash drive ... I just never got to mailing it. I was vaguely aware that it might be still possible to vote in Illinois at the county board of elections without being officially registered, but you have to do that at least 7 days before the election. I found this out for sure three days before.

Hence my three-day funk. I was going to have to sit out voting in a Republican year. All the Facebook reminders and texts from Organizing for America did little to help my depression.

I guess the point of all this, is that the smallest things, like a ride to school and a fresh latte can do a lot to make one feel that post-election life is worth living. Not to mention dishing about boys with my two favorite friends from back home and this blog's co-authors.

This song also helped me through it. It's about apathy, but a lot of it seemed to speak to how I feel right now. She's an Aussie artist whom I saw in SF.

Lines like: "Citizens don't stand up anymore/There's no point losing face." and "I'm a baby boomer's daughter / and I'm never gonna reach Nirvana." are the ones that resonated particularly with me.