There is something different about today. You can feel it. The cold air felt the same on my face this morning, my surroundings are the same, yet something feels unlike it was perhaps only yesterday.

It is the start of something new. An event bigger and one with more meaning and emotion than I can yet grasp. It is that sense of change that made me sit straight up in bed late one night a little over a year ago and realize I was watching history take place. It is the reason I stood in the cold in long lines to hear this man speak. It is those words and hope that inspired me and allowed me to believe that the future could be different.

"Hope" may be just a word for some, but as I and many others grew tired of partisan ways and the divide that separated us not only as a nation, but that which has increasingly brought recoil from the rest of the world to us as a country - something had to change.

It is my hope that we may all come together and work for something larger and beyond imagine. Both as a country and as individuals. It is a time to look beyond ourselves, our own needs and look at the bigger picture. It is a time not to find excuses and judge those that are not exactly the same as ourselves and what we believe. It is a time to come together and work for our futures. We cannot continue as it has been.