On Confidence: the Steve Jobs 1970s Stank

“In the 1970s [Steve] Jobs was a big hippy, and for years he was on a weird diet that he believed made it unnecessary for him to bathe. Practically everyone who knew Jobs in the seventies mentions how incredibly bad he smelled.”

–Lev Grossman, “Steve Jobs and Joan Didion: The Untold Story,” Time, 28 Oct. 2011

This anecdote on Steve Jobs makes me want to write, to speak, to teach, to remember that we all have elements about our past that are less-than-appealing, embarrassing even. If Steve Jobs had reclused himself because of the 1970s stank, he never would have developed the iPod, the iPhone, or the iPad. Life as we know it would not exist.

Just because in elementary school my clothes came from K-mart, and in junior high the girls shunned me, and in high school I had no hope, and in college I wrote stories ornately as if to be hiding, and in grad school I had forty extra pounds, does not disqualify me now from pursuing my dreams, my potential.

Steve Jobs is proof that a stinky past does not preclude a fragrant future. His past proves that our idiosyncrasies are the details of a story only we can write.