One of the great ones

Steve Jobs died today.  I was running errands this afternoon and got home to start dinner.  Sat down to check Twitter for a second while Gray was bathing and Beckham was playing in the living room near me.  I could hear their chatter and saw a tweet that said, "As I was working on my MacPro, My ipad alerted me. My MacBookPro confirmed it. My iPhone tweeted it.  RIP Steve Jobs."  I knew he'd been sick & fighting pancreatic cancer, and was sad when he stepped down from his job at Apple a couple months ago, but didn't realize he wasn't doing any better.

It's weird.  I don't know him personally at all.  I've never met him and honestly, if he passed me on the street, I probably wouldn't have recognized him unless prompted because with his famous black turtleneck and jeans/tennis shoes, he looks like a lot of men.  But when I read that tweet, my skin tingled and my eyes filled up with tears.  I felt for his family and close friends.  He's 56, not much older than my parents and younger than Zac's.  Too young.  And, I felt sad that the world lost a legacy.  One of the really great ones.  He was an incredible innovator, a creative genius, and a walking inspiration.  We utilize 4 apple computers, 3 iPods and 2 iPhones in our little home.  We love Apple.  Our children won't know any different.  I am grateful for the legacy and life that Steve Jobs lived...and that I was fortunate to live in the same time as him and benefit from his great vision.

In honor of Steve Jobs, here are some excerpts about him from today's articles, an awesome rendition of the apple logo that someone came up with today, and a few quotes he said that inspire us.  RIP Steve.  We know where you are and that your greatness is just continuing there.  Prayers for your family.


[Born February 24, 1955, and then adopted, Jobs grew up in Cupertino, California -- which would become home to Apple's headquarters -- and showed an early interest in electronics. As a teenager, he phoned William Hewlett, president of Hewlett-Packard, to request parts for a school project. He got them, along with an offer of a summer job at HP.  Jobs dropped out of Oregon's Reed College after one semester, although he returned to audit a class in calligraphy, which he says influenced Apple's graceful, minimalist aesthetic. Those experiences, Jobs said later, shaped his creative vision.  He was worth 100 million dollars by the age of 25.

Charismatic, visionary, ruthless, perfectionist, dictator - these are some of the words that people have used to describe Jobs, who may have been the biggest dreamer the technology world has ever known, but also was a hard-edged businessman and negotiator through and through.

The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.  Steve was the best of the best. Like Mozart and Picasso, he may never be equaled.]

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.  Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."

"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."


"Creativity is just connecting things.  When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.  It seemed obvious to them after a while.  That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.  And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people."


"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."