A Change Has Come and It Comes with Pie

Tomorrow I have the honor of doing something absurd- leaving a job I love while grinning to Cheshire proportions. Friday is my last day at Edelman after three and a half fantastic years.

All of this because Monday will be my first day on the digital team at Obama for America.

I’m joining the team to do whatever I can to ensure Barack Obama is reelected, as I believe him to be one of the single greatest agents for positive change my generation will know. I’m doing it because it absolutely qualifies as a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity to be part of something *big*, on behalf of something I so wholeheartedly believe in.

And because this is still a food blog and this is how we celebrate… I baked a pie. I will save you from any self-assigned deep metaphorical meaning and just tell you it’s an apple pie topped with half blueberries and half cranberries and it was delicious.

Baked goods aside (for now), I have every reason to believe this could be the single hardest thing I’ve ever taken on. I’m on the brink of being fully absorbed into a challenge so rich that it will swallow me whole for the next year by every account, including that of my new colleagues. And yet I can feel myself humming in anticipation, ready to dig in, understand, and be useful. There is a very real chance that everything I've done to date has led me straight to this whether I was aware of it or not.

For the last few years I have had the supreme good fortune of filling a role at Edelman that more often than not felt tailored to me like a glove, and definitely the kind with the nerdy tip points for texting. I've spent the last three years reading stories and meeting the women and men behind them. I've watched voices from the depths of the Internet become credible and recognized voices of “the people.” There are days when I even feel like I had a bit part in setting up the loudspeakers.

Not to mention the adventures. One after the other after the next and I came home breathless and chattering nonstop. I met her! We ate there! We had the best idea! From Portland to Asheville to Austin to San Diego and New York, New Jersey and New Orleans, I was buzzing. And I was pinching myself all the while for being the one that got to connect the dots. For getting to do it in such fine company.

I work with a bunch of nerds and it’s the highest compliment I can think to give in this context. People with the wanton ability to geek out over feed readers, measurement theories and platform coding but it goes beyond that.

I’m talking about food policy wonks, letterpress junkies, women in waders in search of a quiet spot with all the fish. People who run marathons with hip fractures because you cannot stop them from moving and try at your own peril. Star Wars junkies, chorus girls, music nuts, a fascinating breed of style curators and even a NASCAR fan. There may even have been a few fellow kitchen witches, Gryffindors, cat ladies and bourbon lovers. Just maybe. They are the kind of people who rave rave rave on about that thing you must try because it’s spectacular.

I can’t underline the importance of working with people who are passionate. Who are excited and eager and, above everything else, they are curious.

How does that work? Can I take it apart and will there be something simple and true at the center of it? Yes? Then let’s go there.

Yes. Let’s. I have a good feeling that I’m not done with the nerds. If anything, the stakes may have just been raised. Now that the secret is out, you know where to find me in 2012. There’s work to be done and if you feel like helping, I will gladly take you up on that.

Be advised, I'll be asking for your vote as well.