Why I Owe My Life To Steve Jobs

The year was 1986. I was merely an orphan living in one foster home to being shuffled to another. It was a dark dark time in my life. I was a victim of neglect and child abuse. Something I’ve spent my life spreading awareness about online. It’s something I could have never done had it not been for one of Steve Jobs original creations

The Apple IIe was purchased by my adopted family shortly after I moved into their family home. It became my sanctuary. My safe place. I never felt safe anywhere else. From hours of learning about DOS to writing code, to playing FROGGER I would lose myself in this great invention.

I had that computer in my home every year of my childhood life even as I suffered through 5 long hard years in a boarding school in Montana after I was rejected by my adopted family at the age of 13 for not adapting to their lifestyle.

It was Steve Job’s great first invention that gave me hope for a better life when all else around me was falling apart. It was a simple personal computer that allowed me to forget the world I was living in for a moment and picture a better world somewhere else.

Somewhere far far away. In school the one thing I did devote myself to was typing classes, and dreaming I was far far away. I excelled at typing thanks to my teacher Chris Hoppe. A woman I look up to even today.

After high school life didn’t treat me so well. I switched to Windows until I could fake it enough to buy a Mac and then I created my first company and began designing websites, and blogging.

Soon after I started a software company that I sold.
Then I built a blog network that I sold.
Then I built a news website that I sold.
And another website. And another.

Without Steve Jobs I would have never survived in my real world. Instead I became a dreamer.

A crazy one.
A misfit.
A rebel.
A troublemaker.
A round peg in a square hole.

Dear Steve,
You’ve made an impact in my life that you will never know. I never really pondered it during your life. But your simple devices have allowed me to live each day in a world I can control. I don’t have to be that abused little boy instead I can be a survivor. I can be someone else.

Thanks for living your life as an adopted son, who didn’t finish college. You’ve left behind a legacy I will never compare to. But you’ve inspired me to overcome my past, and my own failings to become the man I need to be.

RIP