Persist until you succeed

My girlfriend has recently entered that place that many, many graduating college students get to/have been getting to/are in. She doesn't know what she wants to do for a career. And when she thinks about the years upon years that she has spent  (both money, and time) learning from people whose job it was to prepare her for whatever it is to do upon completing her educations, it makes her feel all the more unsettled.

I have been fielding text messages and phone calls dominated by this topic lately -- and as someone who is in a very similar position to her, am not the most qualified person to provide counsel. But I was reading an article by a favorite author of mine that become pertinent to this situation. The article profiled someone named Jack. 

Jack's Story:

Jack was fascinated with listening to a police scanner as a kid. He enjoyed what they were reporting: 1. where they are. 2. where they were going. 3. what they're doing. 

He then got into computers, and was particularly fascinated with something called Internet Relay Chat which allowed him to watch programmers code. 

Jack dropped out of NYU with one semester left. 

He started doing some computer programming, but quit because he didn't care for it. 

In 2002, at age 26, broke from attempting to be a massage therapist, he moved into his friend's house in San Francisco in exchange for babysitting his kids.

Then he started taking fashion classes. His fashion design career didn't go anywhere. 

In 2005 he met a successful web designer in a coffee shop, sent the man his resume, and asked him for a job coding software. The company was failing. 

As the company was failing, the owner allowed his employees to "work on anything they want, in hope it would take the company in a new direction." 

The "Away" tags from AOL Instant Messenger caught Jack's attention because they provided the sort of information he liked about people: 1. where they were & 3. what they were doing.

So he created a company called STAT.US.  It failed. 

Then Jack had an idea to use "short message service to report what you're doing, and also receive news of what everyone else is doing." Jack Dorsey went to the dictionary and suggested the name Twitter.

I sent a version of this story to my girlfriend, and she said what many of you are likely thinking: He's the 1%. 

My take:
Jack Dorsey didn't know what the heck on G-d's green earth he was doing with his life. But he persisted, which in his case boils down to: he continued to learn, and he did not stop moving or working. Even when Jack was babysitting his friend's kids for free rent, he was the best babysitter. 

And sure, he was fortunate-enough to create the most successful application of all time, but after reading his story, I understood that Dorsey was not going to stop until he created success. 

Persist until you succeed. 

Jordan