I’m pretty sure that my “crybaby” shading of South Georgia is going to be a liability of some sort someday.

But it’s not like I’m in the place to run for anything anytime soon.

What I’ve done this year was mostly a volunteer effort, a labor of love (and revenge) in the best year and with the best candidate(s) to do it, but in the worst area to do it in and against the worst bunch of opponents (and their base) to do it against and at the significant disadvantage of time and money to start doing it. But a labor of love that I don’t regret.

But throughout this campaign, a lingering feeling that both Valerie and I had was that, besides the Stacey Abrams campaign, we were not receiving the validation that we needed from outside of this campaign, at least not until the last minute.

I’ve felt validation from Valerie, Summer, Ellen and our campaign team in so many ways. I’ve felt validation from the Caffe Amici Dems, especially when they bought that birthday cake for me at the John Barrow event at the UU. I’ve felt validation from the campaign staff this year at the field office.

But outside of the $107.99/month that I get paid for maintaining the website (everything else I do for their PR is for free, I guess), I haven’t felt all that validated by the county committee for a long time.

In fact, except for Saundra, I feel like I’m intruding and making a mess of the post committee’s palaver, just as I have since 2014.

So why do I keep doing this?

Because 1) Local organizations here do a poor job of their own media/PR unless they hire good help, local Dems need all the help they can get in media/PR, and Laura and I can only do so much 2) I hate the current shape of this state, and I’ve felt like I’m obligated to try to improve it 3) I’ve felt like web design and content management is still relevant 4) I want to be paid for my work.

But at some point, I’ve got to give it up. I’ve got to delegate this to more people, train more people to eventually take over the website, media and PR for the county committee.

And, contrary to what I’ve felt, it’s apparent that web design is becoming a dead-end profession. And the tech sector increasingly disturbs me.

And the more I feel that my work goes without validation from this organization, the less invested I feel about the importance of public relations and media for this organization.

And the more that we lose, the less faith that I have in the Democratic Party of Georgia to ever fix this state’s stupid, aristocratic culture.

And the more I feel like this, the more radicalized, cynical, pessimistic and nasty I become.

But for as long as I stayed in this area, this was going to happen anyway, right?