My favorite circus act as a child was the man who rushed around keeping an impossible number of plates spinning on tall, thin poles. In late 1993, I began my own four-year performance on the world stage. The pace was dizzying. Much more intense than anything I'd experienced before. It would require every bit of training, energy, wisdom, and pluck that I had-and then some.

I was beset with quandaries: Would I forfeit family life to the role of diplomat? Could I manage a staff of five hundred? Would I stay connected to people and values that grounded me? And how on earth would I keep all those plates spinning?

Each ambassador's job was to tend the relationship between the United States and his or her "host country." Beyond that, the diplomat's work was mostly defined by individual interests. My immediate predecessors specialized in business exchanges and the arts. At the time I arrived, the entire region of Central and Eastern Europe was hurting, so ignoring borders, I took on that hurt with a passion.

The optimism of victorious cold warriors was dimming as post-communist economies crashed in the early 1990s.