Think Different
Click to viewSteve Jobs dropped out of college because he didn't know what he wanted to do and he didn't want to waste his parents hard earned money. But he still took a few courses that interested him, one of which, of all things, was calligraphy. I always thought I was interested in everything but I don't think I would ever have taken calligraphy in college. But then it turned out that when he was designing the Mac, he remembered what he'd learn in calligraphy about type setting and created the worlds first computer with proper type set that looked good.
I texted my sad when I heard about Steve resigning, but Dad seemed too sad to even talk about it. I've been thinking about Mac stories all day. Some of my earliest memories involve Dad's first Mac. Dad surprised me one day last year when we were watching some old timey Collonial Williamsburg guys printing a newspaper on tv, and started talking about all he knew about typesetting like he'd done it for a living or something, and finally I had to say, Wait, Dad, stop, how do you KNOW all this about typesetting? And in a very different tone, he explained to me that everyone thought he was an idiot in high school, and he had to take trade classes. But somehow before he graduated he realized he was smart and wanted to go to college.
I know you probably haven't, but you should read Outliers. There's a chapter about Bill Gates and how all the successful computer people, Steve Jobs, Woz, etc, were born within like two years of each other or something, and makes the argument for why those were the optimal years to be born to be successful in computers. My Dad is just like two years too old or something. Also Bill Gates went to like the only middle school in America that had a computer lab or something.
So Steve Jobs says don't live someone else's life. Don't do what you don't want to do. Do what you love and if you haven't found it keep looking and you'll know when you find it.
And this reminds me of the advice Jeff Davis gave me, yes Jeff Davis, just five minutes after he was very rude to me so I wasn't paying much attention, and didn't want to take any advice that asshole gave me. But I should have! I was a few weeks away from starting college, and he said, "College? Ok. Take whatever classes you want. Don't worry about the requirements until the very end when they make you take them."
And that would have been awesome...but I was too responsible to do that. And I'm lucky I did have to take some classes I otherwise wouldn't have taken because I learned a lot of great stuff. But what if I had taken just classes I wanted? What would that have been like?
Steve Jobs also says to live every day as if it were your dying day. Check! Haha.
But he said everyday he'd get up and ask himself if what he was doing that day was what he really wanted to be or should be doing, and if the answer was no too many times in a row it was time to change something.
I hear ya.
And now...it's too late. Maybe not too late forever, maybe things will change. But right now, it doesn't matter what I want to do or what I want my life to be like, this is it. There is not much I can do. Even if I really really love doing it.
There are less than 10,000 miles on my car and it just had it's second birthday. I have a three year lease at 10,000 miles a year. I have one year to drive 20,000 miles. I wish I could just take off by myself for awhile. Up to San Francisco along the coast, eat at Chez Panisse, just get the fruit bowl. Spend as long as I wanted walled up in Powell's books in Portland. Visit Farhad in Seattle. Head towards Montana and see the glaciers before they melt. Drive the Going-To-Sky Road. Drive up into Canada just to see if it's any different up there. Bad timing though what with winter coming and all. Head south, down the road to nowhere, though if I were taking it south it would actually be the Road to Mexico. It's a highway that runs down the middle of The Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and to Texas. Maybe I could find out from my Grandma around where her dad herded cattle in the badlands. Head east through the South. Spend some time in St. Pete at Les Paul. Drive up to Ohio and spend time with my family. And then see what New England's like, visit Matt. Go to New York, eat amazing food and visit everyone.