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STEVE JOBS October 8 2011
I needed a couple days to let this all process so no late pass please, but I am really sad about Steve Jobs. I never knew him, but his death has surely hit close to home. I used his life as my measurement - to live what I love, to consider everything as a lesson, to work smarter, to stay hungry, to stay foolish. It’s those last two points that inspired me the most. I remember telling Bojo about that phrase and wanting to put it on a t-shirt. And when I was looking through my notebook, I noticed that I had written those words on so many pages.
How did those words work for Jobs? He dropped out of one of the most prestigious colleges in the Northwest. That was foolish. He knew what he was interested in and focused on that instead. So he took a calligraphy class, for example, which later resulted in the typefaces available on the Macintosh computer. He was fired from Apple - the company he himself started in a garage - only to create two more companies. That’s hunger. One of them was Pixar, the other was NeXT. He eventually came back to Apple, leading the company to its renaissance, and changing the world forever.
How do those words work for me? I wanted to sell t-shirts and I wanted to be a blogger. So I did both four years ago under CA. When the site went up, I probably had two readers. I didn’t know how to market myself nor a niche brand. That was foolish. But I went out, I took pictures, and I wrote as if millions of you were reading it. That’s hunger. Earlier this year, however, the clothing aspect of CA died. I became less sure about everything, but still kept the name going. I ended up starting another company and now serve as a consultant to others because of what I did in 2007.
He has undoubtedly been one of my biggest inspirations in the last several years. Not because of his meticulous sense of design and detail, or because he thought up products indicative of genius, or because he put America on the forefront of cool. But because of his action. Anyone can be a visionary, but not everyone follows through. He did. Ironically, he often envisioned death. Understanding that death is inevitable, he said, “is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose.” So however foolish an idea was, his hunger trumped it, because at the end of the day, he tried.
Thank you, Steve Jobs.
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