Some people buy a motorbike when they have a midlife crisis. Others take up a hobby like pottery. I, meanwhile, have channelled all my perimenopausal rage and existential angst into regularly calling government officials in Philadelphia and complaining about the city’s trash problem. Sometimes I also offer helpful suggestions as to how they can improve things, but these never seem well received. However, the last time I called the mayor’s office the woman who picked up did say: “You’ve called here before, haven’t you?” Which led me to believe that 1) not many people with English accents are calling the Philadelphia mayor’s office to offer unsolicited advice on urban sanitation; and 2) I should probably seek help with my trash obsession.

Since I seem to be airing all my unresolved psychological issues, I should probably add that I have recently diagnosed myself with a condition called Mamdani Mayoral Envy (MME). Depending on your location, you may suffer from it too. Symptoms include reading about New York and wondering why your city can’t be led by someone who actually seems to give a damn the way Zohran Mamdani does.

I don’t want to put mayor Mamdani on a pedestal. He’s obviously not perfect, but you’ve got to admit he provides a glimmer of hope among all the gloom. He didn’t water down his morals to get elected, speaking openly about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. He didn’t try to find some focus-group-approved centrist ground to campaign from, but stood for an ambitious affordability platform.

And instead of abandoning all his promises the moment he got into power (hello, Keir Starmer!), Mamdani genuinely appears to be trying to deliver on them. For the past four-and-a-half months, he has been busy. He has balanced the budget without cutting public services. He’s protected library funding in a way no other mayor has. He’s working with the New York governor to expand free childcare. And he said on Monday that he will be delivering on his campaign pledge to open city-owned grocery stores, with the first location scheduled for next year in the Bronx.

One of the smartest things Mamdani has done is to find quick and practical ways to improve quality of life. In his first 10 days, he fixed a notorious bump at the bottom of the cycling lane on Williamsburg bridge that had caused many a cyclist (myself included) to yelp in alarm. It was scheduled to be fixed, eventually, as part of a larger plan, but Mamdani said it didn’t have to wait. And, boom, life was made tangibly better for the over 8,000 cyclists using that bridge every day.

Mamdani has also filled over 100,000 potholes. I’m no expert, but the data suggests that is a remarkable rate of hole-filling.

The New York Post doesn’t seem impressed, quoting a Republican saying Mamdani is just doing his job: “Taking credit for filling potholes is like taking credit for changing a lightbulb. It’s what you’re supposed to do,” scoffed councilman Frank Morano in the Post. Sure, but the problem is that lots of politicians are not doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

From a personal point of view, I was impressed to see Mamdani become the first New York mayor to publicly mark Nakba Day. In a social media post on Friday, he explained that it commemorates, “the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel”. My grandparents had to flee Haifa in 1948; like many Palestinians, they kept their key with them, hoping one day to return. They never could. My father, who left the West Bank in 1967, has no right to live where he was born – his former home may soon turn into a settlement. It meant a lot to see a US politician acknowledge Palestinian pain. Particularly when Mamdani knew he would face backlash for it – which he did.

But again: I don’t want to gush. Mamdani is not perfect. His timing, for example, is terrible. Couldn’t he have become mayor a bit earlier? After more than a decade in New York, I left for the cheaper climes of Philadelphia in 2022. I missed out on Mamdani but I did get to watch Philadelphia’s mayor have a viral moment supporting the city’s football team, the Eagles, with a chant that went: “E-L-G-S-E-S!” Philly is great, but its leadership really is for the birds.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist