sketch bysusanlin

Yesterday, Steve Jobs resigned as Apple CEO. Everyone was talking about it. Today, even my tiger mum, brought it up, and she doesn’t follow technology. (If my mum catches on to anything in my world, you know it’s made a ripple.) After reading perhaps the 20th article on the subject, one linked Steve Job’s 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech [1]. Steve talks about the inability to connect the dots moving forward and having faith that when looking back, the dots will, in fact, connect.

After rewatching, I kept this in the back of my head today while I wasted the afternoon away, sadly, watching videos of cats (no shame). Since finishing my degree, I’ve been experiencing a looming feeling of lost…

• Moving rather slowly through some coding. Feeling lightyears behind people who have the magical abiltily to realize their own ideas.
• Talking to some buddies back at home. Some still don’t have jobs. So, haven’t I accomplished enough?
• Then talking to some other buddies from home who are out in the world. One is pursuing her PhD already. Kicking academia ass in general. Hm…
• Paging thru some sketches I made recently. Such a joyous, yet useless, talent.

Frustrated by stagnation, I drove myself to Starbucks (always helps) to dwell on the subject more. While reading again, I circle to YCombinator and Women2.0, reading about female start-up founders and the lack thereof. For some reason, I then found myself thinking I should submit a YC Start-up School app despite having almost no technical prowess (HTML/CSS doesn’t really count guys). Go undergrad (part) art major go!

Long story of self doubt short, I decided to point to Raincat as my coolest project albeit it was a team project and I didn’t write any code. But what I did do was the art direction, UI, and small website to promote the thing. To give my answer some ground, I pulled up Analytics to cite the absolute uniques since launching the site… 12k. Um, whoa, when did that happen? In the greater internet world, it isn’t much, but for the amount of promotion and development done on it since finishing (read: almost none), it’s a pretty nice number.

An experience I created on the corner of the web had that many eyeballs gracing it.

This little episode reminded me about a few dots. I was an art major to begin because of their potential to reach people. I then switched to the tech realm because I was enamored by those who could build their own ideas. Then I realize that I am not exactly behind or ahead and that I just need to keep moving forward, refining my craft, regardless of my surroundings. To cite the extreme - Up against death, everything fades except for what you really want to do.

The simplest things are sometimes the hardest to grasp, especially when it’s about yourself, and is only realized when you realize it for yourself [2].

[1] Apple fan or not, this is worth your time, guaranteed.