I’ve been trying to wrap my head around Steve Jobs’ death today.  The news came first from a friend, then I quickly headed over to Twitter and started absorbing reactions, anecdotes, quotes, etc.

I really didn’t think this would affect me this way.  I don’t own any Apple products to speak of (I’m composing this on a Macbook Pro, but it belongs to the company I work for).  And yet, like the rest of us, I’ve been living in Steve’s world.  Toy Story was the first movie I saw in theaters, and I loved it.  Some of my fondest memories are based around Pixar movies.  And even though I never owned a Mac, I still remember using the iMacs and eMacs in the labs in middle school, when my love of the internet and computers was blossoming.  I remember watching Stevenote liveblogs since liveblogs were a thing, and breathlessly explaining to my friends that the new iPod Nano was thinner than a pencil and fit in your jeans pocket, or that the iPhone 4’s antenna was brilliantly a part of the structure of the phone itself.

But it’s not all these memories that I think are what I’m hung up on- it’s not Steve’s product legacy that has me in a funk about his passing.  It’s the man himself.  I watched his Stanford commencement, his double interview with Bill Gates at D, read anecdotes from Brian Lam and others.  I read the quotes everyone is passing around, saw the pride on his face as he was showing the world the iPhone, the iPad, the Macintosh, to the point that he was holding back a grin, holding back a complete blissful collapse because he was so proud of his creation.

Steve, from as best I can ascertain, was everything I could ever aspire to be.  To call him a genius is dismissive- he didn’t create the things he did because he was really smart, but because he didn’t compromise.  Because he had such high standards in brand new industries where there were barely any standards to begin with- that’s why everything he touched became what it is today, in my opinion.

There are so many lessons to be taken from him, and they all resonate with me and where I am in life.  ”Stay hungry, stay foolish”.  ”You’ve got to find what you love”.  ”Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

“Think Different.”

Rest in peace, Steve