Hi Steemit, My name is Ryan.
I am a 37 year old guy from California who has quite a bit of experience...in life. I have been on the sidelines of Bitcoin and crypto currencies for about three and a half years. Most of that time has been spent waiting for communities such as Steemit to come to the forefront, as I believe that 'open sourced journalism' is the future. It is absolutely necessary that we as a global community have places where we can collectively unravel the myopic world view that has been spun for us by mainstream media.
All right, so a bit about me. It's mildly interesting, in my opinion, and hopefully I won't be boring you.
First of all, I was born into a Mormon family and endured that level of oppression for the first eighteen years of my life. I say oppression because, upon retrospect, organized religion and Mormonism in particular are pretty much built on the idea that you should not have any new or different information. It is repetitious and my church was very open about either trying to convert non Mormons or not interacting with them. This lead to a very sheltered upbringing and prepared me not at all for the real world. I left my family at age eighteen because I couldn't live like that anymore. The next decade was spent in a myriad of poor paying jobs and an attempt to try and socialize with people who were wittier and more comfortable than I was. A large portion of that time was spent working seasonally at the Renaissance Fair. I like to say that, “I ran away and joined the circus,” during my twenties and that statement is truly not that far from the truth. A lot of fun and interesting stories that I have are from that time frame, balanced with the wonderful struggles of getting past social anxiety.
It was somewhere in this area of my life that I was able to finally become introduced to the internet. And it was great. I found a niche alternative news website that was not inconsequential. I became a moderator there and wrote a lot. And learned a lot. It was this experience that grew my confidence in the ability of regular people to be game changers – that the crowd is smarter than self proclaimed experts when they are working together in a collaborative environment. There are many interesting stories from here as well, including a road trip with two people from that website where we traveled across the country stopping intermittently along the way to meet up with other people from the website who happened to be on the route we chose. It was fascinating and nerve wracking at the same time, to put real names and faces to people that I debated online with.
I helped found a small citizen journalist group. We focused on police brutality cases in Southern California and would live stream protests in the area. I am unfortunately in a non participatory status with them now, though I am in constant contact with them. I think that filming the police and ensuring that there is transparency from our civil servants is important – this is a particular topic that I could go on about for quite a bit because the reality of the matter is that legislation, funding, and the law enforcement environment evolved to be an 'us vs them' attitude that suddenly realized that they were not equipped to deal with the internet and having their actions plastered all over the news. I of course will provide the disclaimer that there are good cops but we are certainly seeing that there is a huge chasm of difference between what they want us to think about them and what we should be thinking about them – which is that they are under trained humans who have biases and flaws that contribute to their behavior. They should be questioned, their motivations should be questioned and there is a long way to go before any one should feel comfortable allowing them the power that they have abused. Certainly this is a very complex topic and one that doesn't get enough discussion.
My rhetoric, in this case, could be questioned. But perhaps that is the point...but this is a semi linear expression of my life experience so let's continue...
I was also homeless for a bit. I found myself in a position about five years ago where I had no where to go, no job, and no idea what to do. So I just kind of wandered. I spent the first three days feeling kind of guilty that I had found myself in that position and, aside from sleeping next to a freeway overpass (it was a hillside with plenty of grass and trees), just sat on a bench in the park. I ate nothing for those three days and when it sunk in that I was really homeless, I found a place that provided meals for those in need. It was interesting and humbling in a way because they were a Christian organization that required you to sit for an hour and a half during their nightly sermons before you would be admitted into their mess hall. They also provided a place for people to sleep but I never took advantage of it because I couldn't rationalize taking a warm place from someone else – I felt fine next to that overpass. Being homeless was interesting. I traveled to several different large cities, slept in a city hall building (I really can't believe that I was able to do that), slept in parks, entered into a Salvation Army program (which is just a scam to pickup free labor, they demanded all of your free time outside of working in their facilities for meetings and required that you register your name for them to collect welfare on your behalf; I refused that last part and was tossed after two days), and was able to experience what many people have to live through day in and day out. It was humbling and I felt like an outsider even then. This past May was my Birthday and I went to one of the parks where I slept and found a man named Sam. I had packed a backpack full of clothes, food, giftcard, and even a small amount of cash which I gave to him. I didn't want to embarrass him so I introduced myself and left. It's a moment that makes me smile. To this day, because of my Mormon upbringing, I still have conflicting thoughts on the shelter that provided me meals in exchange for religious propaganda. Indeed, I think that forcing people to think and behave completely negates the adventure of learning how human experience can differ. There is a part of me that wants to repeat being homeless on my terms...
And yes, being able to do as such means that I am no longer homeless. I can pay my bills and even have enough to buy a bit of BTC here and there. I also, this past June, graduated with my first degree, an AA in Behavioral Sciences and am one class away from an AA in Psychology. I feel like I am too old to go to school but after all of this time, I can say that I am a college graduate and I think that is kind of cool.
I am not sure that Introductions is really the place for an abridged life story but for some reason, I wanted to share all of this. I have been burnt out on social media for quite some time now but am interested in jumping back in. I think that society is complicated and that there is no one answer for everything. As such, it requires that we collaborate and listen to everyone as opposed to enforcing static opinions and stereotypes that persist from the 'legacy generation(s)” - the people who grew up without the internet and still believe that “because they say so and have access to taxpayer funding” is a good enough reason to impose their what should be considered obsolete standards on a world that can be so much better than what they molded. I believe that computer literacy is the literacy tomorrow and encourage everyone to start learning how to code, even just a little bit, as it is increasingly important. I look forward to some interesting conversations and wish everyone well!
Thanks for reading.