Yesterday was my last day as a city planner. I spent eight years in the field—six as a professional, and two as a graduate student. That’s nearly a quarter of my life.
Yesterday, of course, was also the day that Steve Jobs died.
I left my job in part because of something Steve Jobs said in his famous 2005 commencement address at Stanford University:
You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. 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.
Most of us will never be anything like Steve Jobs.1 But we can all try to make sure that we love what we do.
I’m trying. I haven’t figured everything out just yet. But I’m trying.
- And it’s just as well. Can you imagine a world filled with nothing but Steve Jobses? What a nightmare. [↩]