Why the spin?

[George II]

6. Here's more of the article, immediately following your excerpt:

“Working at a law firm was like a pie-eating contest, and if you won, your prize was more pie,” Yang said in a recent interview on the Acela train from Washington to New York, between hurried bites of a turkey sandwich.

The law jokes play well, especially because seven of the 12 candidates in the last televised Democratic debate have law degrees.

But quitting law was not really about walking away from something. It was more about running toward something else that was calling to him with a sudden, urgent clarity.

“I thought, ‘Shouldn’t I be someone who builds something?’ ” he said. “That made more sense to me. But how do you get there? I figured there was no way to figure it out except to do it.”

So just before the start of the new millennium, Yang and another refugee from his law firm created an Internet start-up to help celebrities use their fame to raise money for charity.

It flopped. He went broke, lost his apartment, lost weight and confidence, and wondered (along with his worried parents) how he was going to pay off $110,000 in law school debt.

But Yang was remaking himself.

“I have no regrets about not picking up that phone,” he said.