I think everyone is pretty tired lately, me especially, but it doesn't mean I get to be innactive at all, in fact I work six days in a row starting yesterday, and I can't stop getting into political debates when I'm 'relaxing'.

But in a way at least I have peace of mind.

I've actually accomplished a new level of peace of mind concerning about a half dozen personal issues concerning a half dozen people. Things I won't really even hint at here, but basically the things that have kept my mind toiling at night when I try to sleep mysteriously all were thrown around and eventually knocked into their correct positions in he past few days. In fact the timing was probably something I was subconsciously responsible for, having it out with so many people in the span of two days. The Election did it to me.

The election was another such peaceful ending. I've had my political outs with everyone already and I'm sure this will just bring more, but I woke up at 5:30 AM on Tuesday to vote, with a nervous ache in my stomach believing that John McCain was actually going to pull off some kind of massive turn around, and be the next person making decisions about my people's lives, safety, money and morality. The announcement that Obama defeated him by 200 electoral votes with many states left to go produced a kind of calm and swell of happiness and relief I will never be able to make anyone who believes in the ideals of our current republican leadership to ever understand.

Part of me was also overjoyed that I actually did get to witness the election of our first black President. I know I try to look at things with race as an irritating leech from the past, and usually view things from an outside perspective, but this actually felt incredible.

8 years that I have felt every second of in my gut have stopped clamping up on me, and fallen away. We can return to the healthy prosperous country I grew up in. It's like coming home.

People will be irritated with me for that statement and I'm sure it would be easy for someone to bring up something about how John McCain was not George W. Bush, or start some tirade about how Obama's policies are almost sort of socialist-ish, if you view everything in extremes... but at this point, I could care less. I'm too at peace knowing that the economy that made my family poor and on edge through my earliest years, that returned to us these past eight years will be ousted for the one I thought could never end during my middle youth. I am at peace knowing I don't have to write any more angry blogs about people with real power trying to destroy our constitution with homophobic scribble for at least four years. I'm at peace knowing the focus of the war on terror will resume being faced on terrorists. I am at peace knowing how many of my generation will be coming home from violent wasteland streets where they die for things so dispicable I cannot imagine how anyone believes in them. I am at peace knowing someone who thinks infrastructure is an important investment is taking my tax dollar. I am at peace knowing people who believe in education and equality within that very system are the ones holding my tax dollars soon. I am at peace knowing someone who does not believe the natural and right state of the economy is a majority of strugglers, holding on to the bare necessities, with little or no luxuries, surrounding a rare few men of the American dream who live in wealth that is hard to imagine; is regulating the economy. I am at peace knowing that someone who is not an extremist religiously, economically, or socially is at the helm... soon.

For all of these things I wait, but I can sigh of relief that they are somewhat set in their happening.

But a third strange thing happened the next morning. Another kind of ending and parting that does not necessarily make sense to be so large for me personally. Michael Crichton was reported dead by his family.

If you don't know who Michael Crichton is, I'll list the hand full of his books that were adapted into hit-or miss, but always well known films: Jurassic Park, The Lost world, Congo, Sphere, The Andromeda Strain, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Great Train Robbery, Eaters of the Dead (the 13th Warrior), and Timeline.

Crichton was my first real author, back when I was still a kid in 1993 all souped up about Jurassic Park. First book aimed at adults ever read. To this day I've read 17 of his books. They are formulaic, I must admit, but it's a good and unique formula, and he encouraged me to always write an extreme level of detail and fact and realism into everything. He made technical scientific information readable and interesting without leaving anything out or bogging it down. His books that were considered Sci-fi, could all for the most part be considered science fact within a few decades. He was never a fantasy author, and I liked that.

His non-fiction was something I enjoyed even more than his fiction. Travels, which details the most fascinating parts of his adul life in brief episodes is something I read repeatedly when I need more information or inspiration to obtain my own life experiences.

Which is why it was a shock. He was secretly battling cancer, and though he always looked 20 years younger than everyone else his age, he was really dying. A man I certainly expected to outlive most of his generation, died at 66.

I could get into detail on my annoyance towards the end of his life with how he used his book in a way that was hypocritical to the points about politics that he had made in it, but that seems harsh and pointless now. He was always way ahead of everyone else anyway, maybe I just didn't get it. In any case it's strange that the man who made me a writer has written his last book. I should consider myself lucky, as most people learn to love to write from authors long dead before they were born.

But in some way I am at peace with this as well. Things end. This has. Ian Malcolm is dead this time, it's not a mistake.

I don't think I hate anyone anymore. Seriously, anyone.

For the first time in years, I shall sleep well.