Editor's Note:

You manage to land the job you've long aspired to. Only it's in Washington, and you're a jet flight away, where you have a family. And a house, which pretty much eats all available funds for shelter. It will take months to sort it out, but your job starts now. What to do?

Rent a basement.

It's a classic D.C. story, one currently being lived by freshman Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), who got elected by an eyelash last November and helped put his party in the majority. As you'll see beginning on Page 12, far from the glamorous existence many of us may imagine for our elected representatives, Courtney is living in a hole with only a bed, a desk, a tiny TV and a closet full of suits. As I read staff writer Michael Leahy's account of the humble nature of Courtney's new position here, at the bottom of a very tall totem pole of Washington political power and already in a desperate race to get reelected, it brought back with shocking clarity my first few months in town almost a decade ago.

I left my family to deal with the house sale in Florida and arrived with two suitcases and a 15-inch portable television in the middle of an ice storm. I had arranged to rent a room in the basement of a townhouse near the Vienna Metro station (the best I could do for $500 a month), which turned out to be windowless and heated only in the most theoretical sense. It had a microwave, a chair, a bed and a small table on which I placed the TV. I'd work late at the new job (which wasn't hard, considering I had absolutely nowhere else to go), make the 15-minute trek home from the last stop on the Orange Line through the ice-coated world, then keep my ski parka on while I heated food substance in the microwave and watched whatever was on the tube with the sound muted -- because I really only wanted something to distract my eyes from the bare walls.

So, although I've never come closer to politics than the 10th grade student council, I feel I know what Joe Courtney is going through: a life that's nine parts daunting and somewhat humiliating new job, and one part stinking basement.

In my stinking basement every night, I sat there huddling under the downy folds of my coat, feeling utterly singular in my purpose -- the job I always wanted-- and entirely alone. I could see myself as if from a distance, a solitary man in a cold, dark room, kin to all those who ever left their families to follow opportunity. I would shut off the TV and finally remove my coat to dive beneath the heavy comforter on the bed, hoping to find there oblivion and a new day.

Tom Shroder is the editor of the Magazine. He can be reached at shrodert@washpost.com.