CNN sent me a box. I found something really important in it.

OR: How a nameplate can matter.

A few weeks ago, I got a note from someone in CNN’s human resources department. They had found a box of my old stuff and wanted to send it to me.

Which was weird! Because I hadn’t worked there in a year and a half!

But, whatever. They sent the box. I opened it. Most of it was old press credentials and the like — stuff I didn’t need and quickly tossed.

There was one thing though that I kept. It’s this:

Doesn’t look like much, right? Just a little sign with my name on it. But is has history.

Those nameplates are what the Washington Post gives you when you get hired there. (I still think they do this but I’m not totally sure.)

It had sat on the wall of my cubicle — almost no one has an office at WaPo (or any media organization ) — for the decade-plus I worked there.

Which, well, big whoop right? It’s a sign with my name on it! Lots of workplaces have these!

But that nameplate meant — and means — a lot to me.

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What it meant to me when I first got to the Post, which was when I was in my late 20s, was that I had made it.

It was a sign of status to me. I had spent nearly a decade working my way up the journalism ladder. The place I worked before the Post — Roll Call newspaper — had a HUGE reputation in Washington but was basically unknown outside of it.

Now, though, I was at the Washington Freaking Post. Woodward. Bernstein. Ben Bradlee. When I called someone — anyone — and said “This is Chris Cillizza from the Washington Post,” they knew the paper. I didn’t have to do any explaining of where I worked or what I was doing.

I loved that recognition. Loved telling people where I worked. Loved their reaction — “Oh that is SO cool.” I was, by my own estimation, a success. I had climbed if not to the top of the mountain then pretty damn near it. And that nameplate was proof.

When I pulled it out of the box CNN sent me it had been — roughly — twenty years since I had thought about it. (I don’t think I ever unpacked it at CNN.)

Over those twenty years, a WHOLE lot had changed.

I saw my star rise at the Post — as politics delivered via online vehicles began to catch on.

I had become a TV presence via a deal with MSNBC.

I had chafed at the Post’s unwillingness to sprint faster into the digital future, with me leading the charge. (My annoyance was mostly my fault, not theirs.)

I had longed for an even bigger platform where all of my writing and TV, er, talking could be under one roof.

I had decamped for CNN — attracted by the size of its audience, the leadership of Jeff Zucker and, yes, the chance to be an even bigger star.

I had watched as all the people who had convinced me to come to CNN — led by Jeff — had been moved out, mostly not by their own choosing.

And then I had become one of them — laid off in late 2022 amid a broad cut as CNN tried to, uh, right-size its business.

That led me to the world of the individual content creator: This Substack, my sports Substack, a YouTube channel, a podcast and the like.

I thought about that long journey when I picked up the nameplate from the box. And how what it meant to me then and what it means to me now are so, so different.

For me now, looking back on the last two decades, the nameplate means a whole bunch of things:

1. You never know what’s coming around the corner

2. Pride comes before the fall

3. “Success” is a tricky thing to define — and hold onto

4. I (still) love journalism

5. There are lots of paths to get where you want to go

I decided to put the nameplate on the desk in my home office. Right below the monitor. In a place where I see it multiple times every day.

Why? Because what the nameplate symbolizes most of all to me is that I am still standing. I am still writing and talking about a thing I love: Politics. I am still fighting to make a life in journalism.

I’ve changed a whole lot since I first got the nameplate. The journalism business has changed even more. But we’re both still here. Still doing it. Persevering amid adverse and unpredictable circumstances. And, at this point in my life, that counts for a whole lot.