Axar.az presents the article “A Day” by John Samuel Tieman.

A day in the life. Or maybe just an afternoon and an evening. Anyway, I was elected last year to the City Council in University City, Missouri. I love my new job. I've discovered that a lot of what the job is about can only be garnered by doing it. If someone asks me to summarize the job in a word, that word is “time-consuming”. I spend part of every day, and some days all day, doing Council work. So I love my new job. But it is time-consuming. And that makes it frequently hard and not infrequently stressful.

When most people think of politicians, they think of the vivid, high-profile stuff. A controversial vote, for example, or a flashy statement on camera. And, yes, that's one part of it. But 80 or 90 percent of the job is constituent services. This one's sidewalk is cracked, and that one's trash wasn't picked up. That and a lot of the job is simply making connections for the constituent. Like when I give a constituent a telephone number and a bit of advice. “You need to call this one, who will then make arrangements for you to chat with that one. Be sure to ask how this one's daughter is doing at Brandeis.” When I make those connections, I so many times think that I'm not a council member as much as I'm a village elder.

A major part of the job is simply preparation. When folks see an “aye” vote, they see a three-second event, one second to turn on my microphone, one second to say “Aye”, and one second to turn off my microphone. What they don't see is that this vote took hours, days, weeks, months, and even years of preparation, study, thought, talking to constituents, committee work, and, yes, sometimes a prayer.

Then there's Friday. Let's just think about Friday. Specifically, Friday afternoon and evening, the second and fourth Friday of every month. My packet for the Monday Council meeting is delivered on the prior Friday afternoon. It many times is delivered by a police cadet. I always ask the cadet how things are going. We chat. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” The cadet is always respectful and friendly and always politely declines the cup of coffee.

So it's Friday, and here’s my life for this Monday's meeting of the City Council. Regular agenda stuff, bills, resolutions, the minutes of the previous meeting, various reports, notes to a study, and such. Two booklets of the annual audit. The comprehensive financial report for the year. About 300 pages of reading in total. And my monthly check for $184.70. I've come to view 300 pages as a moderate amount of reading. I once had about 900 pages to read on the weekend. I turn every page.

Fun fact. If a bill is up for its second and third reading, I usually have already read it and already decided how I will vote. I nonetheless turn every page.

The comic relief tonight is the manila envelope. Ten pages from a guy who wants my help. He's also asked for the governor’s help, the mayor’s help, the FBI's, and the pope's. He’s getting a divorce. That's all his wife's fault. And to myself I say, “And this is my problem, why?” Urban myths notwithstanding, I don’t have the juice to fix your traffic ticket. But occasionally, crazy people take up some of my time.

On Sunday afternoon, I have a town hall meeting with constituents in my ward. I need to think about that, mentally prepare So I'll attend that. And there's still my 300 pages. Didn't T. S. Eliot say something about how the mind can only withstand so much reality?

I love this job. I'm good at it. I like working at this, the most intimate level of the democratic republic. I love that intimacy. Like the other day when I sat on a neighbor's porch and discussed local politics. When I can help someone, there is no greater reward than to serve my neighbor, to be of service. But, as I said, it is time-consuming, which makes it frequently hard and not infrequently stressful. There are those times, like this Friday, when I'm reminded of the ending of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's novella, “One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich”. There are 1,461 days in the term of John Tieman-ovich. That one extra Friday is for the leap year.