Welcome to Ryan’s Newsletter
Especially when we’re young, what tortures us most is obscurity. Not knowing who we are, why we feel a certain way, or whether the path we’re walking is right for us . . .
These obscurities are, today, further complexified by an increasingly convenient world.
We don’t worry if we’ll eat but wonder what we’ll eat; we’re not busy doing but wondering what to do; we’re not as concerned about whether we’ll find employment as we are about which employment we’ll find.
The list goes on.
You see, we live today not by necessity—and, therefore, reason—but by desire. And since we are, as biological beings, prone to impulse before intention, desire can lead us astray. To navigate so tempting, abundant, and not to mention, complex a world, people need inner clarity and external guidance.
Today, we’re short on both.
With so many distractions available, it seems many have lost touch with themselves altogether.
Having committed to pleasure, most people are subtle addicts, giving increasingly more time to their fixes—junk food, scrolling, TV, alcohol, etc.—and less time to fulfilling pastimes—art, board games, reading, relationships, etc.
What were once adventures have become inconveniences; most are satisfied only when they grab onto whatever end they’re so desperate for.
People feel like there’s nothing to do because most activities don’t stimulate them as much as whatever temptation they prefer. And, not to mention, many feel like time is slipping through their fingers because they’re wasting their lives away, giving the majority of their time, after 40 hours at the job they neither like nor appreciate, to meaningless distractions.
This effect wears especially on young people, who are enduring the most obscure and vulnerable period of their lives with hardly any relevant guidance—since it is a world far different from the one in which older generations were raised.
Indeed, older generations often seem as new to this world as the youth.
Not to mention, schools continue to teach the same material taught decades ago while the market has an entirely new set of problems that need to be solved. Not only, as a result, do students leave school not knowing how to solve real-world problems (and, therefore, how to live a purposeful life), but they opt, in their free time, for consumptive rather than creative endeavors (since they aren’t taught how to create meaningfully), furthering the tempting and destructive reach of pleasurable distractions.
People, especially young, are more lost than ever before. Nevertheless, this is a necessary evolution in the history of mankind.
You must be lost in order to be found.
I started this newsletter to help readers—by connecting with myself and clarifying what doesn’t make sense to me—connect with themselves and find their way in what is often so confusing and misleading a world.
It is, in a way, my personal journal . . . A public record of me writing my way through life.
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About me
I moved from my home, Naperville, Illinois, to Charleston, South Carolina, on a whim in 2019 after dropping out of my first college and being rejected, for medical reasons, by every branch of the military.
About a month into my Lowcountry journey, I started writing at a café called Caviar and Bananas, by which, for having spent so much time in, I was eventually hired as a caterer.
The following spring, I began attending the College of Charleston.
For the first several years of my writing journey, I wrote without an inkling of success on a blog called rypaba.com (Ryan Patrick Barry—give me a break, I know it’s corny), which has since been taken down.
In April of 2023, I self-published my first book, Figure It Out, a guide to help young people organize and figure out what to do with their lives.
I started my newsletter sometime shortly thereafter, though I don’t remember when since I am insecure and unpublished all letters posted before March of 2024.
In May of 2024, I graduated from the College of Charleston with an English B.A.
Now, I’m basically a bum. All I do is write.
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