I’m walking around Dupont Circle in Washington DC on Thanksgiving Day, hunting for a coffee shop, cafe, anything that’s open, eventually settling for, god help me, Starbucks. It’s just cold enough to keep my pace brisk, and it’s zombie apocalypse level deserted, the Range Rovers and Mercedes S Classes, I’m imagining, hastily discarded in favor of holing up in the Nicaraguan Embassy, molotov cocktails at the ready.

I’m often asked what it’s like being away from family on the holidays, and it’s really not so bad. I’m lucky - this job allows me to travel the world, about which my family’s haphazardly strewn, and I see everyone often. With an international family, you appreciate that getting the band back together, as it were, is a rare, if ever event, and I’m grateful for hanging with my cousins in Australia as often as I do my cousins in Canada, or Boston.

This line of work’s not for everyone. In fact, statistically speaking, it’s for almost no one. That’s it’s for me I think’s pretty cool, which is why I try to embrace every facet of this befuddling and utterly magical ride.