Watching history

I’ve been a fan of Barack Obama since 2004. Over the past two years, I supported him through the primaries. After he won the Democratic nomination, I did something I had never done before in my life: I donated to a political campaign. In November, I went to an Election Day party, and I still get goosebumps when I think of Jon Stewart telling me circa 11pm that Obama was going to be our 44th president. So you could say that I was very excited about today’s inauguration.

I wanted to take the day off to watch the inauguration live, but I had just taken a day off last week and yesterday was the holiday, so I decided to record it at home on my DVR to watch later. But honestly, I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t going to be able to watch it live.

Then when I came into work this morning, one of my bosses told me that they were going to let us to watch the inauguration live at our office. I truly could barely contain my excitement and as 11:30 rolled around, and they started introducing people in Washington, a group of us gathered around a computer to watch history.

It was amazing to see all those people standing there, supporting our country, supporting our new president. (And being petty, it was nice to hear only polite applause for W while Obama’s name was chanted repeatedly amidst raucous applause.)

It was great to sit through all the introductions, to see the excitement on so many different faces. However, it was a bit tough to sit through that classical piece with the piano, clarinet and strings that sounded like it would have been better served at a presidential funeral than inauguration. But all that lead up to the big moment, Obama being sworn in, and then, his speech.

I don’t really have words to describe how it made me feel. It was just truly, truly amazing. Just…wow. I have never felt more pride in being an American than I did today.

I don’t know if he can do all that he’s promised to do, but I think he’d be happy to hear me say that I think he can and, more importantly, I hope he can.