I don’t have a lot to say about the news this evening. The big thoughts have already been expressed for me by far better writers, but I would like to say something.

I learned how to make websites, record music, and produce videos on Macs. I discovered some of my favorite pieces of music because of iTunes. In a way this loss feels very personal, because the things I absolutely love to do, every day, involve products Steve Jobs helped make.

Towards the end of my senior year in high school, as I grew increasingly dispirited about what I would do for college and beyond, I watched his 2005 Stanford commencement speech (probably the third or fourth time, because I loved Steve Jobs keynotes). And somewhere in there, he says this:

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. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

I’m not sure I can convey what that means to a 17-year-old with low self-esteem and no idea what to do with his future, but in short, it meant a lot. It is advice that constantly aids me in battles against pessimism and uncertainty, in work and life.

So, thanks, Steve, and rest in peace. You’ve taught me to love computers and my work not for the technology alone: “that it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.”