Moments, Margins, and the Long Way Here

One thing I genuinely love about my job is that there is always something interesting unfolding. Just yesterday, I served as a liaison for 17 members of the German press pool traveling with the German foreign minister, alongside four German diplomats and diplomatic security. Working with my Senate counterparts, I helped coordinate and lead a photo spray at the outset of the meeting. Moments like that still feel surreal. (1)

How more perfect can it get? I get to work in a historic institution, move among people shaping global events, and witness moments that will eventually become part of the public record. But more than that, I get to contribute to the output itself. Given my background in media, photography, and communications, that role feels especially meaningful.

When I step back and look across the span of my career, I think about how I arrived here at all: the long hours, the uncertainty, the periods where nothing felt guaranteed, and the sacrifices that rarely show up on a resume. That reflection was sharpened by an article I read recently in The Economist about the concept of the “kill line”, a term borrowed from gaming that’s come to describe how a single event can abruptly push someone into ruin: a car accident, a health crisis, the sudden loss of a job. (2)

I can trace several moments in my own life where I was uncomfortably close to that so-called kill line. Each time, the outcome could have gone another way. Somehow, through persistence, luck, support, or sheer stubbornness, I managed to navigate away from the edge. Standing where I am now, in rooms like the one I was in yesterday, I’m reminded just how fragile, and how improbable, continuity really is.

(1) www.foreign.senate.gov/press/dem/release/ranking-member-shaheen-chairman-risch-statement-after-meeting-with-german-foreign-minister-wadephul
(2) www.economist.com/china/2026/01/12/china-obsesses-over-americas-kill-line