Guest Post: Anne Aretz // @aaretz

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…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.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

– Steve Jobs, 2005

This is my favorite quote from Steve Jobs; it has always stuck with me and I still have the copy that I printed, cut out and stuck in every journal/sketchbook I’ve had since. As I got older though, every time I looked at the rumpled, coffee-stained and slightly doodled on piece of paper, I thought of my brother Alex.

Alex did everything on his own terms, all in the pursuit of what he loved to do. He went from college to boat captain, to waiter, to bike messenger and a few places in between before starting Taza Chocolate. As a man with a degree in Anthropology from Vassar, the path to a chocolate maker was not exactly a straight one, but he just followed what he loved and eventually landed on his passion. As I get older and become closer to my brother, I appreciate more and more his life philosophy, learn from it and am inspired to bring that into my life everyday.

Jobs’ last line, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life” pretty much epitomizes Alex and what he has always told me when I panic about meeting expectations and not disappointing people (we all have those moments). He always told me to live my own life and do what makes me happy, but my generation (apparently I’m an ‘Older Millennial’) heard those words a lot, but Alex said those words and lived them, which is just plain brave.