10,000 Tabs

Sloan Door spent much of her twenties moving—across states, across the country, overseas, and back again. She describes herself as someone who was always searching, with no grand plan for where any of it was leading.

Then, within a matter of months, a woman who had barely ever signed a lease owned a house, was helping raise a child, and bought the coffee shop where she worked. Suddenly she had debt, employees, people depending on her—and one overwhelming realization: “I can’t leave.”

Sloan and Kim talk about the life she built from there, why it took years to really see herself as a business owner, the parts of herself she once worried made her too different, and what she's learning about wanting, belonging, and choosing a life without knowing exactly where it will lead.

Nine years later, Sloan has lived in the same place longer than she has anywhere else in her life. So what made this place different?

MENTIONS + LINKS

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For the first time, I’m sharing a piece of The Multi-Hyphenate Dilemma with you.

My book comes out October 13, and rather than spend an episode telling you what it’s about, I wanted you to actually hear some of it. The Multi-Hyphenate Dilemma is about the messy middle of career change—the period when you know something no longer fits but you don’t yet know what comes next. It’s also about what makes that question particularly complicated for people who are good at a lot of things.

The chapter I chose to read is called “The Curse of Capability.” I chose it because this idea sits at the heart of so much of what I’ve been thinking and writing about for years: being capable can open an enormous number of doors, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you which ones you want to walk through. And when you’ve built an identity around being the person who can figure things out, deciding what deserves your time gets complicated.

Mentions & Links

How bad does it have to get before someone decides to change?

Austin Rampt started using drugs and alcohol at 13, looking for relief from anxiety and shame he didn’t yet know how to name. What followed is a story that almost defies belief—addiction, recovery, extraordinary business success, relapse, and more than one moment that seems like it should have changed everything.

In this episode, we talk about why consequences alone aren’t always enough to make someone change, the connection between achievement and escape, and what Austin began to understand about vulnerability after years of believing that if people really saw him, they would leave. We also talk about fatherhood, regret, and the long process of learning how to stay present in a life you actually want to be part of.

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Do you really have to burn the boats to make a meaningful change?

Matt Higgins’ book, Burn the Boats, argues that keeping a Plan B can get in the way of fully committing to what we want. I expected to disagree with a lot of it. I did—and I was surprised by how much I agreed with, too.

For the first BOOK TALK episode of 10,000 Tabs, I’m digging into self-trust, instinct, risk, boredom, blank space, and knowing when it’s time to stay with an idea long enough to see what happens.

MENTIONS + LINKS

Burn the Boats by Matt Higgins

Pre-Order The Multi-Hyphenate Dilemma by Kim Wensel

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Website: KimWensel.com

Cara Chace knows how to do hard things. She spent years as a Special Agent working high-stakes cases, walked away from a stable government career without knowing exactly what would come next, built a successful business, and later faced a period when her health forced her to step away from work altogether.

But this conversation isn't really about whether we can do hard things. It's about the questions that can surface when being capable, productive, and good under pressure becomes part of how we understand ourselves—and what happens when the life we've become very good at living starts asking something different from us.

In this episode you'll hear:

About The Show

10,000 Tabs is a podcast about change, reinvention, and what happens when life no longer fits the way it used to.

Each episode explores the moments when something shifts—when the version of life or work that once made sense no longer fits, and the next chapter hasn’t fully revealed itself yet.

Through candid conversations with founders, creatives, leaders, and everyday people, the show explores how we make meaning, find clarity, and move forward anyway.

I've been changing directions in my career for nearly two decades. And while every pivot has looked different from the outside, I've started to notice some remarkably familiar moments inside them.

In this solo episode, I'm looking back at the parts of career change we tend to leave out of the before-and-after story: the strange stretch when the old thing no longer fits, the new thing isn't clear yet, and you're left trying to determine whether you're moving forward at all.

Inside this episode you'll hear:

About The Show

10,000 Tabs is a podcast about change, reinvention, and what happens when life no longer fits the way it used to.

Each episode explores the moments when something shifts—when the version of life or work that once made sense no longer fits, and the next chapter hasn’t fully revealed itself yet.

Through candid conversations with founders, creatives, leaders, and everyday people, the show explores how we make meaning, find clarity, and move forward anyway.

Elena Khazanova arrived in the United States as a refugee after fleeing the former Soviet Union with her family. In this conversation, we talk about immigration, trauma, somatic therapy, cancer, and what it really takes to rebuild a life one ordinary decision at a time.

In this conversation Elena and Kim discuss:

About The Show

10,000 Tabs is a podcast about change, reinvention, and what happens when life no longer fits the way it used to.

Each episode explores the moments when something shifts—when the version of life or work that once made sense no longer fits, and the next chapter hasn’t fully revealed itself yet.

Through candid conversations with founders, creatives, leaders, and everyday people, the show explores how we make meaning, find clarity, and move forward anyway.

When Monique Jackson-King was eight years old, she watched Who's the Boss? and decided she wanted to become Angela Bower, the successful marketing executive who seemed to have it all.

Years later, she did.

An MBA. A coveted role at Amazon. Leadership. Influence. The career she'd imagined for decades.

Then it disappeared.

In this conversation, Monique shares what it felt like to lose not just a job, but the identity she'd carefully built around it. We talk about panic attacks, grief, shame, friendships that changed, the seductive pull of prestigious titles, and the slow work of becoming someone whose worth isn't dependent on a business card.

This is what happens when the dream you've chased your whole life finally comes true and you realize it doesn't actually fit.

In this episode, you'll hear:

About The Show

10,000 Tabs is a podcast about change, reinvention, and what happens when life no longer fits the way it used to.

Each episode explores the moments when something shifts—when the version of life or work that once made sense no longer fits, and the next chapter hasn’t fully revealed itself yet.

Through candid conversations with founders, creatives, leaders, and everyday people, the show explores how we make meaning, find clarity, and move forward anyway.

Kim sits down with therapist, yoga teacher, and relational healing facilitator Ateeka Contee to explore what it means to trust yourself through multiple reinventions.

After beginning her career in corporate America with an MBA, Ateeka left behind stability to pursue yoga teaching, eventually returning to school at fifty to become a therapist. Along the way, she learned that the most meaningful career decisions are often the ones that ask us to take ourselves seriously before anyone else does.

Together, Kim and Ateeka explore self-trust, meaningful work, relational healing, and why some of life's biggest transformations begin with one small step into the unknown.

In this conversation, Kim and Ateeka discuss:

About The Show

10,000 Tabs is a podcast about change, reinvention, and what happens when life no longer fits the way it used to.

Each episode explores the moments when something shifts—when the version of life or work that once made sense no longer fits, and the next chapter hasn’t fully revealed itself yet.

Through candid conversations with founders, creatives, leaders, and everyday people, the show explores how we make meaning, find clarity, and move forward anyway.

Many of the conversations on this show have circled career change. This one is about change that ripples through every corner of your life. Change that you didn't expect and would never choose.

Therapist and Kim's former student, Rachel Cash, joins 10,000 Tabs for a conversation about mental illness, caregiving, identity, and a type of grief many people experience but few have language for: ambiguous loss.

Rachel shares the story of her mother's sudden psychotic break and the years that followed. Together, they explore what it means to lose the version of someone you once knew while they are still physically present, how family roles shift in the wake of illness, and why some forms of grief never receive the acknowledgment they deserve.

This episode covers:

About The Show

10,000 Tabs is a podcast about change, reinvention, and what happens when life no longer fits the way it used to.

Each episode explores the moments when something shifts—when the version of life or work that once made sense no longer fits, and the next chapter hasn’t fully revealed itself yet.

Through candid conversations with founders, creatives, leaders, and everyday people, the show explores how we make meaning, find clarity, and move forward anyway.