When you’re young, you dream that if you work for years at that exciting, sexy pursuit, you can become a professional. Maybe you even do that work. Then, one day, you wake up in a cold sweat and realize, you just can’t play golf any more.

This week on Inner States, we have stories of not one but two people who came really close to being professionals in very competitive fields, and then hooked left. Diana Hong fell back on…stand-up comedy. ‘Cause that’s a safe bet. And Jack Canfield is packing boxes in a warehouse. Quite happily, as it turns out.

A Note about Packing Boxes

What I find interesting in Jack's story is that he came so close to making it in this prestigious, competitive – really, elite – career, and then left, to work in a warehouse. That may seem like a fall, but I don’t see it that way. I’m actually quite interested in people’s relationship to work regardless of the socially-agreed-upon "status" of the job. If you work in a job that our society generally doesn’t see as skilled, or interesting, and you want to tell me about what we're missing about that, please, get in touch.

Credits

Diana Hong's story was produced by Avi Forrest. The Inner States team is me, Alex Chambers, with Jillian Blackburn and Avi Forrest. Our executive producer is Eric Bolstridge.

Special thanks this week to Diana Hong and Jack Canfield.

Our theme song is by Amy Oelsner and Justin Vollmar. We have additional music from the artists at Universal Production Music.

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