Kristin Cabot,
Public scandal has a way of flattening people. It reduces decades of competence, grit, and earned credibility into a single frozen image that circulates without context, mercy, or proportion. In your case, a fleeting moment at a Coldplay concert became a viral morality play, one that stripped you of professional standing and, by your own account, left you branded “unemployable.” That word carries a particular cruelty. It suggests not merely consequence, but exile.
There is, however, a profession that understands exile. A profession built almost entirely of second acts, reinvention, and people who arrive not because their lives were tidy, but because they needed something sturdier than reputation: a skill, a craft, a record that speaks for itself. That profession is court reporting.
Court reporters are not public figures. They are not brand ambassadors or cultural symbols. They are guardians of accuracy in rooms where emotions run hot, stakes are high, and human behavior is often at its worst. They sit quietly while people lie, cry, posture, implode, and occasionally redeem themselves. They do not judge. They preserve.
If that sounds appealing, it is because your career has already been adjacent to this world. Human resources, at its best, is about process, fairness, documentation, and accountability. Court reporting is those values, stripped of corporate varnish and enforced by law. The transcript does not care who is popular, who is powerful, or who is disgraced. It cares only about what was said, when it was said, and by whom.
At 53, you are not too old for this profession. In fact, you are precisely the age many of the best reporters entered it. Court reporting attracts people who have lived long enough to understand complexity. Former teachers, journalists, paralegals, musicians, military veterans, single parents rebuilding after divorce—these are common origin stories. People who have already learned discipline the hard way tend to thrive.
The training is rigorous but finite. Unlike corporate leadership roles, which often demand endless credential inflation and opaque gatekeeping, court reporting is brutally transparent. You either write fast enough and accurately enough, or you do not. There is no rumor mill, no whisper network, no performance theater—at least none that determines your livelihood. Yes, freelancers gossip, and yes, there will always be those inexplicably threatened by competent, beautiful, successful women. But unlike corporate environments, that noise does not control your income or your future. The machine records what your hands produce. Merit is measurable.
And unlike HR leadership, where authority is constantly negotiated and often undermined, court reporters operate with statutory backing. In many states, they are officers of the court. Their neutrality is protected because the justice system collapses without a reliable record. Judges may be impatient. Attorneys may be abrasive. But when a dispute arises over what was said, the room turns to the reporter. Quietly. Reliably.
There is also an economic reality worth noting. Court reporting is one of the few professions left where independence is not only possible but common. Many reporters are freelancers. They choose their assignments. They set boundaries. They build client relationships based on trust and competence, not optics. For someone who has experienced how quickly corporate loyalty evaporates under public pressure, that autonomy matters.
You have spoken about the irony of being asked to return to your role after the internal investigation concluded—about the impossibility of standing before employees as the embodiment of values when the internet had already rendered its verdict. Court reporting removes that burden. You are not the moral exemplar. You are the witness to everyone else’s conduct. There is dignity in that distance.
It is also a profession deeply attuned to gendered double standards. Court reporters—overwhelmingly women—have spent decades navigating rooms dominated by male authority, enduring casual disrespect, and maintaining composure under scrutiny. Many know exactly what you meant when you said you spent years pulling men’s hands off you just to do your job. This is not a naïve field. It does not require purity narratives. It requires professionalism.
Most importantly, court reporting offers something rare in modern work: closure. Every day ends with a finished record. A tangible product. A clear contribution. In a culture that thrives on endless outrage cycles and reputational purgatory, there is relief in producing something that cannot be distorted by algorithm or innuendo.
This is not a suggestion to disappear or to accept punishment you do not believe you deserve. It is an invitation to redirect your formidable work ethic toward a profession that does not pretend to be kinder than it is—but is, in practice, far fairer. A profession where your past does not trend, your personal life is irrelevant, and your value is established keystroke by keystroke.
You said, “This can’t be the final word.” It does not have to be. Some people rebuild by reclaiming the spotlight. Others rebuild by choosing a room where the work matters more than the noise outside it. Court reporting is such a room.
If you ever decide to step into it, you would not be alone. You would be among people who understand that life does not unfold cleanly, that reputations can fracture overnight, and that the most honest thing a person can do is learn a skill so solid that no one can take it away.
The record, after all, is forever. And someone has to make sure it is right.
STENOIMPERIUM 