My first time (all the cool kids are doing it)

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My strategy when I was depressed yesterday was to:

1) Actually finally push myself to make the phone calls to my congress-peeps.

2) Text my parents and sister that I'd called. (Sister and I agreed at Christmas that we'd love to get our parents to call. Their rep, in particular, is someone who I want to have hearing support.)

2a) Get really excited when mom said she may need me to talk her through how to get established. End up researching her congress-peeps, finding numbers, writing out a script, and sending to her.

2b) Slip back to depression when mom emailed back that she's not going to call this time. (I understand her reasons. Still sad.)

2c) More hope after my mom forwarded my email to her liberal friends. Follow-up with all of them about my experience calling.

3) Text a handful of other friends that I'd called and asked if they had yet. Know I successfully got one person to call for his first time.

4) Reply on Twitter to woman I met once five years ago talking about her calling experience.

Someone said to make the calls even more effective, we should be going public.I think there are various levels of what going public means. Sometimes it's posting on social media, sure. Sometimes it's having conversations with the people you know who maybe you don't talk about this stuff with usually. And sometimes it's giving high fives to cheer on the community that you have. 

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Call My Congress was a helpful landing page for me. Linking to Open Secrets was fascinating.

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My sister says it's like calling in your pizza delivery. You need to know the number you're calling (probably not Domino's, go with a local joint), what you're asking for (pepperoni no olives/Affordable Care Act),  and where you live (so they can deliver the pizza/know you're a constituent). 

Like at the pizza place, they're much more used to receiving the calls than you are to making them. Having a script planned helped me this time, the same way that I would practice my order before calling the pizza place back in the day.