"Can there be misery loftier than mine?" I don't want to be too melodramatic. I quote that line because it was a favorite from a play I was in in college. But today was a pretty miserable day. I took a lot of grief from a lot of people and I’m really tired of it.

A while ago, I heard a radio interview of a young woman who had volunteered at a halfway house as she pondered a career in social work. She found that she could not become a social worker because she couldn’t distance herself enough from her clients; she could not help but become emotionally involved.

When I was writing computer programs years ago, life was easier. The emotional involvement in a bond calculation subroutine is pretty low. But politics is different. I care about what happens, a lot. I've been told that I'm too thin skinned to be in politics, that if I can’t stand the heat, I should get out of the kitchen.

Well, I would like to get out of the kitchen.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.

But, there are others to worry about. People to care for, mouths to feed.

I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Perhaps that is what has gone wrong with politics in our country.

now it's just another show. you leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away.

We need people that care in politics today. We need people that are real, but the political system is just too brutal and I’m not sure that there is room for people like me in politics.

Can we change the world? Rearrange the world? It’s dying to get better.