Sublime

was a box checker—marching to the resolute beat of effort/result, effort/result—a

Barack

relished the swerve.

Her goal was to push us out into the world.

self-reliant and curiously hardwired for optimism.

“Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”

held up as the most powerful woman in the world and taken down as an “angry black woman.”

This, unfortunately, was the box checker in me. I endured misery for the sake of appearances.

I was still privately and at all times focused on the agenda.