My wife and I are big movie lovers. Every year, between January and March, we race to see all the Oscar-nominated films. We watched A Complete Unknown last night and The Brutalist a couple of weeks ago. The latter far outshines the former as a movie, but both share a common theme: the creative obsession.

Timothée Chalamet, as Bob Dylan, is up at all hours writing songs. Sometimes he rushes into his apartment, stumbling over furniture, holding onto an idea in his head, hoping it won’t flitter away, and frantically writes it down. Adrien Brody, playing a visionary architect named László Tóth, paces compulsively around the construction site of his latest project, ensuring everything is built to perfection. He even admonishes and tries to fire a young worker who’s just goofing off.

There is an all-consuming something that takes over your thoughts and actions when you’re in the groove willing something to life, whether it’s a song, building, design, or program. I’ve been feeling this way lately with a side project I’ve been working on off-hours—a web application that’s been consuming my thoughts for about a week. A lot of this obsession is a tenacity around solving a problem. For me, it has been fixing bugs in code—using Cursor AI. But in the past, it has been figuring out how to combine two disparate ideas into a succinct logo, or working out a user flow. These ideas come at all hours. Often for me it’s in the shower but sometimes right before going to sleep. Sometimes my brain works on a solution while I sleep, and I wake up with a revelation about a problem that seemed insurmountable the night before. It’s exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.

Cold Arrival

It’s 11 degrees Fahrenheit as I step off the plane at Toronto Pearson International. I’ve been up for nearly 24 hours and am about to trek through the gates toward Canadian immigration. Getting here from 73-degree San Diego was a significant challenge. What would be a quick five-hour direct flight turned into a five-hour delay, then cancelation, and then a rebook onto a red-eye through SFO. And I can’t sleep on planes. On top of that, I’ve been recovering from the flu, so my head was still very congested, and the descents from two flights were excruciating.

After going for a short secondary screening for who knows what reason—the second Canada Border Services Agency officer didn’t know either—I make my way to the UP Express train and head towards downtown Toronto. Before reaching Union Station, the train stops at the Weston and Bloor stations, picking up scarfed, ear-muffed, and shivering commuters. I disembark at Union Station, find my way to the PATH, and headed towards the CN Tower. I’m staying at the Marriott attached to the Blue Jays stadium.

I recently came across Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by former software engineer Ken Kocienda. It was in one of my social media feeds, and since I’m interested in Apple, the creative process, and having been at Apple at that time, I was curious.

I began reading the book Saturday evening and finished it Tuesday morning. It was an easy read, as I was already familiar with many of the players mentioned and nearly all the technologies and concepts. But, I’d done something I hadn’t done in a long time—I devoured the book.

Ultimately this book gave more color and structure to what I’d already known, based on my time at Apple and my own interactions with him. Steve Jobs was the ultimate creative director who could inspire, choose, and direct work.