It's Tough, But Hey, It's Fun

Campaigning is surely a tough thing to do!!

Think about this. You got to reach some 3500 residents in the neighborhood, knock their doors, spend time in talking to them on the issues that matter them the most. Then there are other issues you ought to take care of – posting lawn signs, giving interviews to the local papers.

Getting in touch with the neighbors can be a challenging job. If you knock some 100 doors, you’ll most likely get only 10 neighbors talking, depending on what time of the day you knock the doors. You’ll be luckier if you try over the weekends, but forget to get anyone talking to you if you try to knock before 5pm on the good days. The good thing is, like everybody else on the council, I’ve a full time day job to worry about, so I don’t worry my missing productivity during the day on this front.

Sure my choice of word ‘challenging’ may translate into ‘frustrating’ to many of you, but hey look at the bright side of this.

Through this campaign, I had this opportunity to meet so many of my neighbors, who I never met before. Sure, many of them I met at the NCPCA and the city/county meetings, but didn’t quite know where they actually live.

Then there comes the discussion part. As part of the campaign, I’ve had my own ideas on the neighborhood issues, have done quite a bit of studies on them, have read numerous newspaper and online articles and commentaries, but never had this opportunity to listen to the unique perspective of these issues from the neighbors. I think that is awesome.

The bottom line? Knocking doors may seem to be a painful thing to do, but surely it’s a rewarding job – its fun.