This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Katherine Burns and today we're going to hear

stories about finding your Colleen in medicine, firefighting, journalism, and politics.

Like our first storyteller, David Lit, who fell in love with the presidential candidate's

message and moved to Washington in the hopes of being called to serve.

At first met David when he called me up a few years ago. He said,

hi, I'm a speechwriter for Obama. Can I buy you a cup of coffee? And I was like,

yes you can. Here's David Lit, live at Royce Hall in Los Angeles.

In 2008, I was one of those young people who became obsessed with Barack Obama.

I was a senior in college at the time and after I graduated I drove out to Ohio and I worked on

his campaign and after the campaign I drove to Washington because hope and change.

And two years later the White House actually hired me. They hired me to write speeches.

And people would hear about my new job and they would say, wow, you must be really good.

And I'd say, I don't know, I hope so. And they thought I was pretending to be humble,

but I was entirely sincere. It's not that I didn't think I had any talent whatsoever.

It's just that I knew there are 300 million people in America and some of them are babies.

But a lot of them are adults and it just seemed unlikely that I was the best

we the people could do. So every day I walked through the gates of the White House absolutely sure

somebody had made a mistake. And while this was going on my friends and family were equally sure

they now had direct access to the president of the United States.

Like I'm sitting in my White House office and I get a text from my sister Rebecca and it says,

how come the Department of Homeland Security doesn't have a mailing address?

Now even in the best of circumstances this is a disturbing question to get from a family member.

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