So here we are, my friends. Election Day arrives Tuesday, and we will see what happens in contests at the national, state and local levels.

I have worked in journalism in some form or capacity for 24 years, including my time as a student journalist. I have worked election nights in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016. The last time our country did this, I was blessedly away in the land of nonprofit advocacy.

However, I’ve learned some lessons along the way for dealing with stressful election nights. Let me share them with you.

Don’t bother following early news reports or leaked exit polls. Broadcasters will fill the air with the equivalent of political cheese puffs. They might taste good and make you feel like you’re eating something, but those salty snacks will be almost entirely devoid of substance. Only begin to pay attention once polls start closing and the Associated Press begins calling states.

This might be the most difficult of all my pieces of advice to follow. I routinely fail at following it myself. It nonetheless is a steadfast and sensible direction.

Don’t be surprised if we don’t know the winner election night. Donald Trump’s campaign has all but announced that he will claim victory no matter the results, but seven swing states and a close election means that we could be waiting for a handful of days. That’s OK. That doesn’t mean a grand conspiracy is afoot. It simply means election officials are doing their jobs.

Patience will be in short supply Tuesday, but hoard as much of the stuff as you can.

On the other hand, don’t be surprised if either Trump or Harris wins handily. Given the possibility of polling error, and the fact that swing state outcomes could be correlated — in other words, the candidate who wins Pennsylvania is likely to also win Wisconsin and Michigan – we might see a clear and convincing winner named late Tuesday evening or early Wednesday. I wouldn’t count on it, but who knows?

Seven states matter most, but Kansas matters too. The big seven swing states in the presidential election are (in alphabetical order) Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If Harris wins the Rust Belt and swing states, along with a single electoral vote from Nebraska, she should win the race overall. If she doesn’t, she will need to pick up some combination of the remaining states to emerge victorious. For Trump, the task is take one of the three Rust Belt states and hold the other four. That’s the national election in a nutshell.

Here in Kansas, you should watch the fate of Republican legislative supermajorities in the House and Senate. Democrats have invested time and energy in picking up a handful of seats that would potentially give them (and Gov. Laura Kelly) a greater voice in the legislative process. 

Your favorite candidate may not win. That’s a fact of life, living in a democracy. You may fear Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, disdain Harris’s liberal positions or pine for Jill Stein. But your feelings won’t affect the result, beyond possibly motivating you to vote. A single candidate will win and become president. Given recent polling, that suggests that roughly half of Americans will be disappointed no matter what.

We all have roles to play. If you’re a parent, you have parenting to do. If you’re a teacher, you have teaching to do. If you’re a journalist, you have stories to report and write. Once a winner has been declared, millions of Americans will despair at their state and nation and claim and that nothing will ever be the same again. That might be true, regardless of the winner.

Goodness knows, the United States has been through startlingly awful times in the past. Nothing guarantees that we won’t experience startlingly difficult times in the future. However, I also know that whenever our country has been challenged in the past, there have been great numbers of people to stand up for truth, justice and human rights. People in Kansas and throughout the United States want to work together for a better future.

Nothing guarantees us peace and prosperity. Nothing guarantees us our lives free from worry and disappointment and pain. To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien: We just have to decide what to make of the world as it is in the time we have.

There will be a next day. Those of us committed to a flourishing civil and democratic society will have our work cut out for us whatever the outcome. So take the time you need to square yourself with the results. Whatever candidate you voted for on Tuesday, the country needs everyone working in some kind of ragged harmony to make it better.

Take a deep breath, dust yourself off, stand back up and get back to work. Your state and nation need you.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, at https://kansasreflector.com/submit-opinion/.