Stay Hungry, and Don’t Get Fooled Again

Looking back on his own life, Robert Steven Williams isn’t so sure we should listen to all of Steve Jobs’ famous advice.

Last week I told a story at the Fairfield Museum in CT as part of a Story Teller Evening.  My tale was about camping out a week for Who tickets when I was a senior in high school. The day tickets went on sale, I was also scheduled to take my SAT.

Looking back, I’m horrified to think I did this, but even worse, when my mom saw that I’d told a story, she asked which one, assuming it was something I’d already written. When I told her it was about buying Who tickets, cutting school, and sneaking out of the house, she found that amusing. Then I told her about the SAT. I could hear a shift in tone; she’d had no idea.

I may have botched my SAT, but I busted my butt at San Diego State and ended up at a graduate school in Harvard, so she can’t be too upset; but there I was, at 53, squirming as if I was still in high school.

There’s another twist to the story. A few weeks after I bought the tickets, my mom and step-dad went to New York to see a Broadway play and stayed the night. My step-sister threw a party and over a hundred kids showed up, the cops too (funny how back then Twitter or Facebook was not needed to get the word out).

That evening someone stole my Who tickets. I ended up getting passes for my very seats from the Spectrum Security because they remembered me (that would never happen today). My mother had no recollection about me disappearing for that length of time, or putting my SAT score in jeopardy, but she did remember that my tickets had gotten stolen.

A few days after this conversation with my mom, I spoke to my sister about it. She is four years younger and was still in eighth grade when this occurred. She remembered me camping out, scoring second-row center, and that I had taken my SATs the day tickets went on sale. But she didn’t recall my tickets getting stolen.

How odd what we remember and what we don’t of a time that took place almost 40 years ago.

Perhaps because I still work in the music industry, it doesn’t seem that long ago. I still attend concerts, I still play guitar and hang out with musicians. And yet, I’m looking back in horror at the cavalier approach I took to my future, putting it at risk for great Who seats. What would I say to a kid today that might contemplate doing the same for Jack White or Arcade Fire?

Clearly I’d tell him screw the tickets, take the SAT seriously. There will be a gazillion other concerts in your future.

I was also wondering how different I was from yesteryear, given how much I was willing to risk back then because I was passionate about the Who.

I didn’t have to think too hard to realize that I’d repeated this pattern more times than I cared to admit; none more critical than when I dropped out of the corporate world to write in 1998. That was a huge gamble because I was a successful executive with plenty of opportunity. But I was passionate and wanted to be a writer.

Are we that set in stone at such a tender age?

Reading all the eulogies this week about Steve Jobs and his urging to live life passionately, to stay hungry and stay foolish, it’s easy when you’re as successful as Jobs to advise us mortals to not settle. For every Steve Jobs, there are thousands who followed their dream right into oblivion.

Following my passion has been difficult too. I certainly was hungry, perhaps not foolish enough. Although some would disagree on my degree of foolishness, especially my ex-wife, who couldn’t understand why I’d given up a great job to do something as impractical as writing. And it’s true, I lost substantial amounts of money, I squandered opportunity, and I wrote a lot of bad prose.

But along the way I became a more grounded, much more self-aware. I started to see and feel in ways I’d never experienced. I also made deep and profound connections with people that I never would have met if I hadn’t had the guts to follow my muse. Along the way, the writing improved.

I haven’t set the world ablaze, but I have touched a few hearts along the way. Looking back, I take comfort in knowing that the kid I was is still around.

—Photo loran/Flickr