I've been sitting close to anger for the last few weeks. I can't pinpoint its source, so I'm sitting with it and wondering what it's trying to tell me.

I think some of it comes from the assignment many of us received as millennials: follow your passion, make a difference, leave the world better than you found it. We took that seriously; look at how many of us have walked into government offices all over the country here recently.

But somewhere along the way, "make a difference" became one more thing to fit between paying the bills, getting the car registered, approving school forms in three different apps, and changing a password again because it's somehow both too weak and impossible to remember. Or it's one you used three iterations ago.

From where I stood as a kid, adulthood looked like a shorter list. Work, groceries, taxes, the occasional trip to the bank. Every generation has its own pile of responsibilities, and ours comes with the school portal, the never-ending flux of medical portals, two-factor authentication, and a steady stream of breaking news arriving in our pockets. We keep the household moving while tracking a planet in crisis and trying to remember whether the dentist takes our insurance.

"Saving the World" is scribbled on our to-do list, somewhere under "buy paper towels" but above "investigate long-term water storage systems."

For me, that item has acquired a job title. Being elected means people bring me problems that matter deeply to them, and I owe them honesty, effort, fairness, and follow-through. Recently, a constituent reached out late one night with a small, kind request connected to someone who had helped during a car crash. The request was understandable, but the imperious reminder that I was there to "serve" them boiled me. I had wanted to help. But at the moment, I just wanted to send the upside-down smile emoji, the tiny digital equivalent of, "If you can't say anything nice ... "

I took their email address and put my phone down, sending an email in the morning, like the adult we both needed at that moment.

A city is not one person with a toolbox, and a councilor does not have every lever in reach. The work is shared with staff, colleagues, budgets, procedures, and time. A constituent may be carrying one problem with the force of their whole world. I can care about it, and I do. I may care, but not as much as they do. Their urgency comes from living inside its consequences. Mine has to make room for the rest of the district, the needs competing for the same attention, and the limits of what this role can do.

The limits of what one person can do. The limits of me.

People-pleasing makes that hard to accept. When someone is disappointed, I want to add an item to the list: explain better, find another lever, make them feel heard, prove I care. Then the list grows, and the anger keeps bubbling up. I wonder if it is telling me that I have been carrying too much of other people's disappointment as a private obligation.

We were told we could make a difference, and many of us have spent our adult lives trying. I still believe the work matters. I am learning that the world does not get better because one person adds every emergency to her list. Some things have to be carried together, and some things have to wait until morning.

Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Greg Rosenke at Unsplash