Well, I'm on the ballot. The town clerk called me today to confirm that I had collected enough signatures and that enough of the signatures had been verified to get me on the ballot. This makes the run official.

I'm very proud of how I got the signatures. In short, I didn't. Some amazing people in our community took care of it. Our wonderful neighbor brought the signature sheets to a basketball game. My wife brought them to another. A family friend took them to another sporting event. In the end, I gathered about eight of the 64 collected signatures. I also did this at a youth sporting event. Our community made this easy and pleasant.

Turning in the nomination papers was easier than picking them up, which was extremely easy. I dropped them off at the town clerk's office. She recorded the papers' delivery date and told me they would be in touch soon.

In my last post on running for office, I wondered when the best time to turn in nomination papers was. I think the answer is "as early as is convenient." There isn't a huge rush, but in my case, the town clerk was able to review the signatures and let me know that I had enough to be nominated. This was well before the last day that nomination papers could be turned in. Had I turned them in at the last minute and run into an issue, I would not have been able to run.

Having that campaign phase over also gave me a nice psychological boost. It felt like the preliminaries were over, and now I could really get to work. It added some legitimacy to my campaign, which probably translated into being able to set up meetings more easily.

I don't want to show my hand on what my campaign activities are, so I'll probably post a little less frequently while the campaign is ongoing. However, after the campaign, I'll add a bunch of retrospective posts that explain each step I took so you can learn from them.