Somehow, it is fitting that this is the post that is my 100th post for my blog. My how time flies!

I told myself that I would be in bed about 90 minutes ago, but there have been too many things running through my head tonight … and I feel like I need to get them out.

It all began yesterday with a phone call I took from a good friend from the east side of the state. I asked my friend awhile back to help me with something I want to work on this year. I asked him because I trust him. I trust his advice and his observations. He’s a very decent and good man and I am grateful to be able to call him my friend.

At any rate, he called to tell me of something he’s observed. At first, I wasn’t all that concerned about it. I wasn’t concerned because when we move forward in life, when we look to do something new, when we look be the best that we can be, you just have to play life however it comes to you. And that was my initial thought … things are the way things are and it will be the way it will be.

However, over the past 24 hours I’ve started to think about reasons why. Why do people do things that they do? Why do I do the things that I do? At the end of day, is it worth the struggle? At the end of the day, will I be better for trying to work on what I want to work on?

Dire Strait’s Brothers In Arms came up on the iPod a couple times during the day. The final line of that song suggests that “We are fools for making war on our brothers in arms.” In the political world, the world that I have chosen to make my profession, it seems that we are always making war on our brothers. One day, we are standing arm in arm, working towards common goals, and trying to make our world a little bit better than we’ve found it.

The next day, we’re fighting against each other, tearing each other apart in some damned foolish battle of ideas. An election comes and goes, someone wins, someone loses, and we forget to be brothers again at the end of the day. It’s painful to watch. It’s even more painful to be involved in it.

Of the many regrets that I have, the friends I’ve lost because of things like this often climbs its way to the top of the list. I think of the friends I was really close to 6 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago and I miss them. I know we’re not “brothers in arms” like we used to be and I’m partially to blame for that.

But that’s in the past. For now, I must focus on the present … which brings me back to Brothers In Arms.

The first time this song caught my attention was when I heard it during the Season 2 finale of The West Wing. In that episode, the President has just told the nation that he has M/S and of course, the first question that folks asked him was “Are you going to run for re-election?”

He struggled with that question and at first he decided that being the President of the United States wasn’t worth it. He felt this way up to the point when he had an imaginary conversation with Mrs. Landingham (his personal secretary who had died the previous episode). In that conversation, he imagined she said:

You know if you don’t want to run again, I respect that. but if you don’t run because you think it’s gonna be to hard … or you think you’re gonna lose … well, God, Jed, I don’t even want to know you.

Do I continue on the path that I began this year? Do I continue to press forward on this very personal project I want to do? What do I do?

Tonight, I have determined this is my answer, and it is what it is: