Having a personal space of my own is as necessary in my life as breathing. I don’t need to use my personal “me space” everyday, but I like to know that it’s there should I need it. As someone who has always had to cohabitate—first sharing a bedroom with my older sister, then with college roommates, and now my husband—what prevented a head-spinning exorcist moment was my insistence on claiming even just a corner (if sitting in your closet, uggs provide the best cushioning) to myself. But how do you claim a space for yourself when you have a million things competing for your attention?

We’ve heard for months that the economy is improving, except for one stubborn problem: workers’ wages aren’t rising the way they should be in a recovery. Productivity goes up, corporate profits go up, CEO pay goes way up—but most working people’s paychecks are stuck. What we haven’t heard as much about is how we can raise wages. The economy is not like the weather—it doesn’t just happen to us, and we don’t have to just sit and wait for it to get better. The leaders we elect make the policy decisions that can fix the economy. Now it’s our job to put enough pressure on them until they actually do.