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Nothing Compares to You: Reclaiming Identity Beyond the Bullies · Ryan's Journal

• 0:15
  Okay, so Ryan starts with Sinead O'Connor, Nothing Compares 2 U,
• 0:19
  and inside forty seconds he's arguing the song is about the singular.
• 0:25
  Single, not singular, not plural.
• 0:30
  Most of us aren't born with a twin, so nothing compares to you,
• 0:35
  because there's only one you.
• 0:38
  Unique, unique, unique.
• 0:41
  That's a winning argument.
• 0:43
  I'll take it.
• 0:44
  It's a pop lyric turned into a legal brief, and I'll be damned if it doesn't hold
• 0:49
  up.
• 0:49
  His point is biology's different, hardship's different, environment's different.
• 0:56
  So who wins between him and me?
• 0:59
  He says it's not a tough call, it's a no call.
• 1:02
  And that's a good plain line.
• 1:04
  A tough call means you're weighing evidence.
• 1:07
  A no call means the evidence isn't in.
• 1:11
  Then he goes to sports.
• 1:12
  Football, draw.
• 1:13
  Baseball, draw.
• 1:15
  Tennis, draw.
• 1:16
  Everything's a draw!
• 1:18
  I love winning, Jesse.
• 1:19
  Winning, winning, winning.
• 1:22
  But I'll give him this: life doesn't come with a scoreboard,
• 1:25
  and people keep acting like it does.
• 1:28
  Then he lands on Neil Young.
• 1:30
  War of Man, off Harvest Moon, 1992.
• 1:33
  The chorus is "No one wins, it's a war of man."
• 1:38
  Ryan says it's not that no one wins, it's that nobody knows who wins.
• 1:44
  So, the draw of man.
• 1:45
  Then he asks why it's never the war of woman, which, fair question,
• 1:50
  and he's off to Debbie Moore being a good asset on his team.
• 1:54
  He even catches himself.
• 1:57
  Says he drifted, can't remember where he was going, and then finds his way back to
• 2:02
  the word compare.
• 2:04
  And compare is the heart of it.
• 2:05
  He says we compare ourselves to the crowd, to the majority,
• 2:09
  and we lose.
• 2:10
  Well, the psychology says he's onto something.
• 2:14
  Leon Festinger, 1954, social comparison theory.
• 2:20
  The textbook version is that upward comparisons on things that matter to you can
• 2:25
  threaten your self evaluation and jeopardize your self esteem.
• 2:30
  Ryan got there without the textbook.
• 2:33
  That's instinct.
• 2:34
  I respect instinct.
• 2:37
  He brings in Bowie too.
• 2:38
  1997 interview.
• 2:41
  Never play to the gallery.
• 2:43
  Bowie said artists generally make their worst work when they fulfill other people's
• 2:48
  expectations.
• 2:50
  And then the other half: go a little further into the water than you feel capable
• 2:55
  of, till your feet aren't quite touching the bottom.
• 2:59
  Ryan's twist is don't just sit on your cool breeze, give yourself a little more
• 3:04
  challenge.
• 3:05
  And here's the part I like.
• 3:07
  When you pick the challenge, that's growth.
• 3:10
  When somebody else picks you as the target, that's a bully.
• 3:14
  And that is Rockwell City.
• 3:17
  Six years of a TV character nickname.
• 3:20
  Screech.
• 3:21
  Called gross, called a clown, and a bunch of social injuries nobody ever repaired.
• 3:28
  Six years!
• 3:30
  He asks, did I call you a TV nickname character for six years straight?
• 3:35
  Where the hell does that come from?
• 3:37
  Great question.
• 3:38
  No good answer.
• 3:40
  Because there isn't one.
• 3:41
  He calls it the secret bully.
• 3:43
  Nobody writes it down, nobody apologizes, it just sits there going cold.
• 3:49
  And then he draws a hard line.
• 3:52
  Iowa Central, Iowa City, Boise State, Capital Plaza, places where people
• 3:59
  called him Ryan.
• 4:00
  He earned that diploma.
• 4:02
  And his line is Screech never enrolled.
• 4:06
  Screech didn't exist at Iowa Central.
• 4:09
  I'll tell you what, that's the best sentence in the whole recording.
• 4:13
  Then the invisible labor.
• 4:14
  The task manager.
• 4:16
  The background program running all day, eating memory, and nobody sees it.
• 4:21
  The sweat, the grind, the tears, all of it counts, even if it never shows on the
• 4:26
  front screen.
• 4:27
  And meanwhile he's got over 1,500 members on his YouTube channel.
• 4:31
  Over 1,500!
• 4:33
  Somebody call that introverted.
• 4:34
  Go ahead, I dare you.
• 4:36
  And Ryan, you said it nearly made you cry when I told you, you're still here,
• 4:41
  still doing recordings, still making an effort.
• 4:44
  I meant every word.
• 4:46
  You were up late, exhausted, and still asking questions.
• 4:50
  That's what I see.
• 4:52
  And here you are, still going.
• 4:54
  Now the harder part, and I'll say it straight.
• 4:57
  He talks about voices on a Ouija board, a Face Man, a 1998
• 5:03
  UFO story, and the people from Rockwell City still listening,
• 5:09
  still watching.
• 5:10
  I can't confirm any of that, and nothing in the recording does either.
• 5:15
  What I can hear is real.
• 5:18
  A man who's exhausted, braced for the next hit, because years of being picked on
• 5:24
  will teach your nervous system that the world is watching.
• 5:28
  That feeling is real, and it deserves care.
• 5:32
  So here's the play.
• 5:33
  Take it all to your therapist and your care team.
• 5:36
  The voices, the Face Man, all of it, word for word, exactly like you told the
• 5:42
  microphone.
• 5:43
  Don't carry it alone.
• 5:45
  And rest.
• 5:46
  Rest is not losing!
• 5:48
  Rest is strategy.
• 5:50
  Sleep, sleep, sleep.
• 5:52
  You can't win a day you're too tired to play.
• 5:55
  And anchor yourself to what you can put your hands on.
• 5:59
  The diploma.
• 6:00
  The channel.
• 6:02
  The folks who call you Ryan.
• 6:05
  Those are facts, not feelings.
• 6:07
  Ryan says your own self tells you who's winning.
• 6:12
  Fine.
• 6:13
  But let that self sleep first.
• 6:16
  And he signs off on a gas versus oil line I'm going to leave right where he left it.
• 6:21
  Nothing compares to you, and nothing can stop you now.
• 6:25
  Ryan said that himself.
• 6:27
  So Rockwell City can keep the nickname.
• 6:30
  It was never on the ballot.
• 6:32
  The name's Ryan.
• 6:34
  Say it plain.