Stay hungry, stay foolish.
”Steve Jobs’ Apple empire is now worth 100 billion dollars.”
It said in the Metro newspaper’s heading, in bold type across a double-page spread.
Ironically, I was sitting in the Stoke Newington branch of Wetherspoons, not some cool, tech-hipster cafe in Mountain View, California.
The buzz was visceral reading that article, a feeling spoke to me in a flash “Maybe I could be like him?”.
I was a broke, 25-year-old, socially anxious, self-employed web designer who hated talking to clients and managed to get by on email correspondence only. This was in 2007, just as Facebook was in its infancy and before people lost their attention spans in the short video era.
I just want to say that it’s absolutely good to dream, but I feel that we are all told we can be anything we want these days. That said, the keyword is WANT. You have to really want it, and we often go for things we think we want. Or want to want. Does that make sense?
What were the real chances I could be the next Steve Jobs? He was a rare individual who revolutionised computing, music and smartphones, and I liked the idea of being him, with no particularly special skills. We were universes apart. I think the fact that we were both adopted made me feel more like it was possible.
A good starting point for being ‘The next Steve Jobs’ is to really, truly have the ambition, to have the desire. Me being excited about technology and thinking that Jobs was cool, didn’t really cut it.
That said, I studied him for the next few years, not obsessively, but I read his autobiography, watched hours upon hours of YouTube videos about him and even got mentored by someone who was a high-level entrepreneur. He had led teams to great successes and wanted to teach these secrets to others.
In hindsight, I was just looking for something to focus on, to feel worthy. I was really seeking self-esteem rather than being a tech billionaire!
As you may know from other posts, I started drawing again in 2019, after many years. I stopped because of my art teacher at school, he said “You can’t draw large scale”. My defences were up and I dropped out of his class.
Inspiration arrived in the form of a Platon documentary. He created a fair bit of stunning black-and-white photography. Sat on my cosy living room floor on a cold winter’s afternoon, with the documentary on in the background. I started drawing in black and white, using some brand-new watercolour brush pens I bought the day before.
A couple of years later, I created the sketch below because the quote struck a chord with me.
I only came across the above quote in 2021. Something resonated, so I listened to the audio version over and over to get it embedded into my brain.
What resonated? The feeling of being a creator, the ability to create from an idea is a quotidian miracle as I’ve said before. I remember walking my dog around the block with Jobs’ little speech on repeat, thinking “Wow, someone created this neighbourhood that I live in, starting with a thought!”. We all know that our houses were created by someone, We see house-builders creating new areas all the time, but we don’t feel it viscerally. We don’t see the implications of this. It’s just one of those things that is there in the background of life. We sit with the belief that doing big things is for others and not for us.
Not only that, EVERYTHING we see first started as an idea in someone’s mind. Of course, humans didn’t create nature, but something did.
Once you realise that little old you can create things, and as Steve said “You’ll never be the same again”.
Here’s the audio clip, it’s only 91 seconds long. Credit to the Silicon Valley Historical Association 🙏
I still get inspired by Steve’s Philosophies and I do return to his words now and again. Certainly, the invention of the smartphone was world-changing.
Sending my love to you,
SLART
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P.S. If you’re new here, check out some of my other posts below: