The One Night I Never Get Any Reading Done

[image description: a bunch of “I voted” stickers scattered across a white background.]

People ask me all the time, “Do you read every day?” For simplicity’s sake, I answer yes because 99% of the time, that’s true. And no one is looking for me to pull out my day planner and tell them exactly which days I didn’t get any reading done.

But over the years I’ve noticed there’s one day every so often that I never get any reading done, no matter how hard I try: Election Day. Especially Election Night as the results are rolling in.

I turned 18 juuuuust in time to vote in the 2008 election and couldn’t have been more thrilled to cast my ballot for the future President Obama. I stayed up all night, celebrating by myself in my bedroom at my conservative mother’s house doing happy dances.

In 2012, I knew President Obama had the election sealed, even though I knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of him clenching my home state of Alabama. So in 2012, I voted Green Party––not because I didn’t love Barack, but because if a third party gets 5% of the popular vote in Alabama they get on the ticket. I don’t think the two-party system is helpful or representative of a country as diverse as this, so I wanted to do my part to help a third party get on the ballot in the future. It didn’t work out, but that didn’t stop me from obsessively watching the numbers roll in.

In 2016, I was curled in the fetal position and hyperventilating on the couch. My partner is a political reporter, so he was downtown at the Ohio Statehouse covering the election there, so I had to suffer alone. I kept sending him panicked texts and at one point he encouraged me to get off the internet and read a novel. But how could I read at a time like this? I tried, but I ended up reading the same paragraph over and over without retaining any of it and eventually gave up and cried myself to sleep.

In 2018, I got smart and started caring about midterm elections. I went to an Election Night watch party at Two Dollar Radio Headquarters. There were some positive gains and some sad losses, but overall I felt so much better to be spending Election Night at a local bookstore among my people. None of us were reading, but we could support the bookstore as the community space all good indie bookstores are during times of stress and strife, and we could buy books they’d specifically curated for the event about issues we cared about. Just being surrounded by books and book people made it a million times better for my mental health.

Now here we are in 2020 and the pandemic has canceled any in-person Election Night watch parties. I’m doing things a little differently this year. Thankfully my political reporter husband gets to work from home, so I won’t be alone and he can keep me posted on the big breakthroughs without my eyes being glued to the TV and continuously hitting refresh on the NYT’s election map.

And because I’m a stubborn person, I’m going to try to read. Nothing serious; something distracting. Something tells me it’s not going to work out, but what’s a book nerd to do? Election Night is the one night when I’m too distracted and anxious to function. I voted early over a month ago, so my goal for Election Night is just to keep my shit together and not have a panic attack. Let’s just hope my books and brain won’t fail me.

And for the love of all that’s good in the world, if you haven’t voted yet, GO! Do it now! Please! I beg!