What Steve Jobs Meant to Me...

Though I never met the man, Steve Jobs to me represented opportunity.

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

When in 1991, after floundering in the field I had chosen to pursue,
and a failed marriage, I decided to take a step back and try and
figure out what it was I wanted to do with my life.

I knew that I wanted to make money, sure...I wanted to make
a decent living that used all of my talents and not just
a physical labor job. I wanted to be excited about what I did
everyday, and to not dread going into work and hating myself,
or my employer, as I was currently doing.

I decided at the end of 1991 to go back into Commercial Art,
as I had been good at it in High School, and had loved the
creative end of it. I enrolled in my local Technical College,
and as I soon found out, things were moving in the art field
toward being created on the Computer. And that computer was
the Macintosh.

I graduated Technical College with my degree, and went to work
for a company that had just started moving their art production
over to Computer Production, and again that computer was the Macintosh.

I found myself becoming a much needed cog in the wheel there, as I was
one of the first new hires that not only knew the platform, but
could help the company grow as they moved more and more into
Computer Generated Art Production.

Four years later, I had left art totally behind, and moved into a
position at the same company as a Systems Administrator in the
IT department. My specialty: the Macintosh.

Seven Years later, four OS revisions, and countless releases of
Macintosh machines later, I left the company in good hands,
and used my skills I had acquired to move into a higher paying
position elsewhere.

I also took my knowledge gained on using Apple's Software offerings,
such as Final Cut Pro, iWeb and iMovie to create freelance work for myself,
to grow as a creative, and even further enrich my earning potential.

And all of this would not have happened without Steve Jobs.

Steve's vision of how people would use computers, how they
would change the way we got things done, how we could come
to view it as more than a tool and as a valid part of our lives,
created opportunities for people like myself, to be able to
escape from the cycles of dead end jobs, from dead end existences
of just collecting a paycheck and not contributing to society.

I may have never met the man personally, but I'm proud to have been
enriched and blessed by the fruits of his vision, by the labor of love he
created that made not only computers an integral part of of our lives,
but how he was able to bring so many who had been without a clear
vision for themselves and their futures, like myself, a moment of clarity.

Rest in Peace Steve.