The last week was crazy, but it's not like anything extraordinary happened. Ruby got a yucky cold and suddenly the delicate balance of barely keeping everything together was out of whack. She would wake up repeatedly before we went to bed, so our evenings were shot. She would wake up repeatedly after we went to bed, so our nights were shot. I actually started enjoying caffeine again after, oh, a decade of caffeine abstinence (some occasional green tea notwithstanding).

Some of this has, of course, to do with how close we choose to live on the edge, so to speak, to start with. We both have activist jobs, which means we work irregular hours. While I'm lucky to be able to limit my work hours to more or less 32 per week, David easily works more than 40 hours and the many trainings he gives are exhausting, not to mention the excessive commuting he is stuck with. And I've started taking on, slowly but ever so surely, more and more Solidarity work again. Then there's the little things like hanging out together, that social moment they call family time, or with friends, or playing music, exercising (ha, I wish, really, I do wish), relaxing and all that jazz.

But that edge feels like it's worth it, most of the time. I love my job. I forget to plan in vacation because it doesn't feel like a chore. I have a perfect balance between hanging out with Ruby a few days a week (I work in the office on Tuesday through Thursday and put in my extra hours on Monday and Friday evenings after David gets home from work) and working at my job. And it feels good to be back at work in Solidarity. It gives me an amazing community of like-minded radicals, it forces me to read and think, it gives me an organizing outlet and helps give me a place in this world that feels meaningful and useful.

That said, it isn't easy. I have yet (will I ever?) figured out the balance between being a parent, a partner, a worker, an activist, and myself. Lets not even get started about how hard it is to be for or against anything right now, given the damn odds and the lack of a real fighting and organized left.

Confusingly enough, there's little in my marxist politics and community that can help figure out that balance (at least not as far as I know). I find myself turning in circles trying to figure out this whole balance challenge. How to be whole when it's so hard to bring all the fragments of who I want to be together? Or rather, is there some hole that needs to filled and what with? I've started reading some books on meditation (not a skill I think will come to me easily, knowing myself that much). Something simple as exercise (but where do I find the time?) might help too. I want to start cooking again--good for the body and for the soul they say. With time I might figure it out, although I'm trying to also just accept that it'll always be a challenge.

I really think this isn't just something that activist parents wanting a better world struggle with. Although past times where change was easier to win and the left didn't feel like a small strange sect were far from perfect, I am jealous of people who were part of the 68 movements for example. Being on the left now just feels so fucking hard. Really. It takes blinders sometimes (blinders to our own craziness of trying, trying and trying again), excessive and slightly misplaced optimism at others and just a lot of energy not to give up. Even though I know why I'm doing this, even though I love learning from those who came before me and even though I truly believe that, my balance issue notwithstanding, I do feel whole and that's a darned special thing to feel, it really does push me over the edge at times.

Anyways, it's against this backdrop that I watched Mike Leigh's latest movie, Happy-Go-Lucky. It's about a kindergarten teacher in Londen who is just happy all the time, even when she's faced with bad mean people. Normally I'm not in favor of "Don't worry, be happy" movies. Because come on, there's a lot for most people not to be happy about right now. So how out of touch was this otherwise brilliant director who has produced these amazing social realist movies that just zoned right in on the bigger forces that impact everyday people's lives? Anger is often a really good starting point for organizing. And to not worry means to not even start to think that "yes, I can do something to change this world." That message there, or rather lack thereof, is one of the greatest sins a leftist can commit.

But how can we build a movement with unhappy activists and people? Leigh's message aside, I personally just loved his movie for that reason. I want to find my inner happy child, that balance thing, and use it to sustain myself and my community. I want to see, hear and feel that wholeness in other people too. Maybe that edge will feel less like an abyss.