Thoughts On Steve

Wednesday October 5th, I was at work on my break and as I always do I reached in to my bag to retrieve my iPhone to see if I had any texts.  There was one from my mom.  All it said was, "Steve Jobs died at age 56."  And the first thing that popped into my mind, was the number 56.  I thought to myself, "that is way too young!"  My own father is 50 years old.  If I were to lose my dad a short 6 years from now..... I didn't even want to think about it.

Obviously I didn't have any kind of personal relationship with Steve Jobs, but for some reason the news of his death seemed to have a profound effect on me,  it deeply saddened me.  Im not sure why exactly, maybe is because in the last year his Apple products, such as my iPhone and MacBook Pro, had been such a big part of my life, or maybe it was because I had got to know Steve through the many articles and videos I had seen of him.  Who knows really? But what I did know is that there was a huge outpouring of grief, not only from the technology community, but it seemed every community was mourning the death of the great visionary.  Celebrities were tweeting their condolences and memories, people were flocking to there nearest Apple retail store to lay flowers or post a sticky note on the window with a few words for Steve on it.  I honestly don't remember the death of a person that seemed to have such an effect on so many various groups of people.  Barack Obama said that, "There may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device that he invented." I did. The President really put it perfectly.

Steve was not only just a technology titan though, he was also a father and husband, and our thoughts and prayers should go out to his whole family in their time of grief.  There is going to be a biography released for steve on October 24th written by Walter Isaacson, and I personally can't wait to read it and learn more about the amazing man that was Steve jobs. His legacy will live on through his products for many years to come.

Here are a few of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes, taken from his famous Stanford Commencement  speech.

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” 

“you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” 

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” 

“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” 

“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Figuring Life Out

Finally I get a chance to write another blog!  Its been a little crazy at work lately so I haven't had much time, but hopefully I can start writing on a more regular basis because I love writing my thoughts down.  (nerd alert) I kinda feel like this blog is similar to Dumbledore's pensive.  A place where I can just empty my mind by writing my thoughts down.  It helps me think clearer, gives my foresight and hopefully assists in me making better decisions.

Literally all I do at work it walk up and down an aisle and label boxes and throw them on a conveyor belt for ten hours.  It really is mindless and monitions work, and because I don't need to think about my work at all, I have a lot of time to think about other things, and more and more lately my brain has been steering my thoughts in the direction of my career.  Its funny, when you're a senior in high school thats usually the time people start thinking about what they're seriously going to do, but everyone says if you can't decide now you'll have plenty of time later.  Then when you get into college they say the same thing,  "college students change their majors all the time."  But despite this, It doesn't make me feel any better about the fact that I just can't seem to make my mind up about what the heck I wanna do with my life.  I seriously am the most indecisive person when it come to choosing a career path.  I am constantly changing my mind about what I want to do and I can never seem to narrow it down to just one thing I want to go for.  So with all this time at work, I decided to try and make good use out of it.  Because I can't just pick a career and be satisfied with that choice, I need to narrow it down somehow.  So here are some things that I want out of my job.  I want to work with people in some way or fashion.  Right now at my job I am alone 90 percent of the time and I hate it.  Next, and this is a slightly weird request, but I really want a job in which I can wear a suit.  I like to dress nice as my friends know.  I don't want, what some might call a blue-collar job anymore.  I have worked several of those throughout my teenage years and I have not enjoyed one of them.

Great so that narrows it down to probably about a million and one jobs.  So where do I go from here?  How do I sort through it all?  I keep hoping Im going to have some dream one night that will show me at my perfect job on a flashing neon sign and when I wake up I will say "thats it!" and just know.  I really envy those kids who just know what they want to do from a very young age and work toward it their whole teenage life.  Well my teenage life is behind me and I haven't really worked towards anything.  I'm definitely not scared yet, but I worry a lot.  Im the kind of guy who likes to be on top of things and know whats going on, and this is one thing that I just can't seem to get a grip on.

Let me know that you think about this issue.  If you are an adult and you have a job that you enjoy, how did you go about figuring out that you wanted that job?  If you are an indecisive kid like me, tell me how you are dealing with not knowing what you are going to do.  And if you want to just make suggestions, well thats cool too (:

To Dream or Not to Dream...

When you are a kid everyone tells you to go for your dreams, and dream big!  They say you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up.  So as a kid you think of the coolest job you can imagine because at that point you don't even care about money yet.  So you dream up all the things that you see on TV and read about in school.  Some kids want to be astronauts, some want to be famous singers, others want to be a movie stars.  I personally wanted to play for the Boston Red Sox.  When you are young these things don't seem so out of reach.  Well as you grow a bit older, you begin to realize that some of your dreams may not be so realistic.  You can't be an astronaut if you get sick just from going on a roller coaster,  and you can't be a famous singer if your shower head can't even stand your voice.  During your teenage years you begin to figure out what your strengths are, and you proceed to formulate goals which seem slightly more realistic than the whimsical fantasies of your childhood.  Now Im not saying that you can't be a professional baseball player or a movie star.  If in high school you find yourself starring in everyone one of the schools theatrical productions, or as the star pitcher of your baseball team then maybe those are paths you should pursue.  But for most of us, what we long to do as a child ends up not being quite as easy to accomplish as we had hoped.  Even though we may not all be cut out to be in the movies, that certainly does not mean we cannot all find a career which we love.  And just because you have grown more mature it does not mean you can't still have dreams.

When I was in the final months of my high school career I formed a band with some of my close friends.  At first we began playing music for fun but as time went on it became something more, it became a dream.  We released some music and our friends seemed to like it.  So we released some more music, and people seemed to genuinely enjoy listening to it.  We figured if we could just get more exposure and more fans maybe we could really make something out of this band thing.  But time goes by and "life happens" as one of my friends likes to say, and we still hadn't got to the point we had hoped, and the band became stagnant.  This band life was my dream as a young adult.  I watch these bands, whom I loved, play their music for big crowds every night and drive around the country with their best friends, and I wanted to do that! I wanted it so bad, and I still want that.  I don't care about being famous or making loads of money, I just want to do something I know I'll love.  And obviously there are lots of bands out there who tour and make a living at it.  Why couldn't I do that too?

There comes a point though, in your life when you have to make a decision on what you want to go for. But my question is, when is that point?  When do you let go of your dreams and begin working toward something that is more safe?  Sadly I don't have the answer for that question.  It is something that has consumed so much of my thoughts.  So I ask you, is there a time to move on from your dreams?  Or should you never let go and keep chasing it until you you've either caught it or no longer have the energy or will to continue?  Theres really no right or wrong answer to these questions, and Im very interested to see what people think!

Into the Real World

I recently turned twenty years old, and when you are nineteen, you still feel like a kid. You feel like nothing can touch you.  You are right out of high school, still immature in many ways, still naive to what the "real world" is like in many ways.  But eventually you have to start making important decisions about your future, and that can be a really tough thing. Society tells us you have to go to college to be successful and get a good job, and that may be true in many ways, but it forces you to make some tough decisions at an early age.  How, when you are eighteen years old, do you choose the career that you are going to pursue for the next 2-8 years of college?  It can lead to severe stress and anxiety when you are a senior in high school.

All through school I was one of those kids who would procrastinate until I absolutely had to do something, and I did the same thing with college.  Upon graduating high school with grades which were good, not great,  I decided to try out community college.  After one semester decided it wasn't really what I was looking for.  So I decided to take some time off from school, get a job and save as much money as I could. Well after and year and a half of working two different jobs, waiting tables, and working at a distribution center,  and saving no money, I decided it was definitely time to go back to college so I could pursue a career in which I would want to go to work everyday, instead of dreading it as I do now. Back when I was fresh out of high school, I didn't appreciate what college could do for me.  I just wanted to take the easy way out and start working and making money, but the real world ends up kicking your butt.

I feel like I spend a lot of time thinking (and worrying) about my future.  Am I the only who does this? In what ways do you cope with the pressures of life, and school, and prepare yourself for what the future has to hold?  I am interested to hear your ideas and opinions, so leave a comment below.