A year ago today, my heart soared as Barack Obama was inaugurated. While my regard for the president remains undimmed today, I find myself tending to agree with Arianna Huffington, who wrote in Huffington Post yesterday that the US political system seems to be broken (largely by bitter partisanship and punditry-disguised-as-journalism) and incapable of getting much done to move the country out of its doldrums. Huffington says Obama-brand Hope needs to give way to Hope 2.0 in which citizens must create change because government can’t or won’t do it.

Seth Fiegerman on the site Mainstreet has put together a slideshow, The Upside of Unemployment: 15 Stories, that shows how folks are making the most of the current jobless recovery. The stories remind me of last year’s Job Action Day, in which we similarly looked at silver linings and places that people were finding pockets of hope in these tough times.

The protagonists of Fiegerman’s very brief stories did not wallow in the misery of their unemployment but saw it as an opportunity — an opportunity for a mom to stay home with her new baby, for people to start businesses, for folks to qualify for cheaper homes and college tuition, for newlyweds to travel the world (using money they’d saved to buy a house), for a writer to author a book, for a woman to undergo self-actualization and learn the kind of work she really wants to do, for a woman to pursue personal fitness, for a property manager to go back to school, for a woman to care for a dying parent, for a dad to spend more time with his family, and more.

No matter what situation in our broken system is in need of fixing, stories of grassroots efforts to take the initiative and generate hope and change will inspire others to mobilize toward creating a better nation.