Hey everyone, Ryan of Self Sufficient here.
This is my first time posting on here so along with what I planned on writing I will start with an introduction about myself, I'm 26 years old and live in Vancouver, Canada. I spent a lot of my time studying geopolitics, the economy, philosophy, and many other subjects too numerous to delve into too deeply just yet, but I will be writing about in the future. This isn't just a plug for my band, so if you want you can skip this part, I just wanted to provide some background context as it ties in heavily with where I am now.
For 6 years now I have been playing in a band I founded called "Self Sufficient" we play an eclectic range of genres and any time someone tries to pin us down it's always something different, I would say the closest description is "Progressive Pop" but again we don't try to plan what genre a song is going to be, we just pull music out of the ether and then at a later time structure and refine it. Music is something that has always been important to me, and it's something that I not only naturally gravitated to because I enjoyed listening to it, but as someone who has dealt with clinical depression most of their life it has always been very comforting for me to be able to write, I feel like it's the best medium for me to be able to express myself. Although I would say I am fairly articulate I would imagine with the type of audience on here I would not surprise too many by saying that a lot of the time no matter how grounded in truth or how interesting the idea, some people just don't want to listen. There is some sort of personal, emotional block, or because they've been conditioned for most of their lives, trying to undo all that in a short space of time even if you spend hours at a time is no easy task.
At first the music was a selfish endeavor in the sense that I didn't really care if anyone heard it or shared it, it was a very cathartic process and that was my main reason for doing it. Over time though as I began to heal (without going into too much detail) I suffered from abuse for about 10 years from the time I was 5 till around the age of 15, lived on the streets on and off, and as I'm sure one can imagine got into some really negative stuff. Around the time I was 19 I finally hit the bottom. Looking back it really simplified things, I had lead a very nihilistic life up until that point, it's not like there wasn't a shred of good in me, but when you're in that type of environment your thinking becomes very warped and when you're struggling with mental illness it's very hard to separate what is the illness, what is the effect of the environment and then sandwiched in-between what you really are.
I don't write this as a "woe as me, feel sorry for me" because the fact is, I'm doing quite well now. All that crap is behind me, it's more to inspire people that no matter how bad things may be going in the moment, there is always a choice to reverse course even if we don't see it at the time. We all have free will and we can all turn our lives around. I had tried starting many musical projects before but none of them really panned out. People weren't dedicated and to be fair, it's not like the people I was surrounding myself with had the type of work ethic and mentality I had. However, when I was 19 things started to fall into place and over time I had met someone I could really trust and ground myself, eventually we became room mates around the time I was 21 and that was when I could finally take the time to work on myself.
As messed up as my life was for the first 20 years or so of my life, I always tried to go out of my way to help other people, I guess in a way I felt like if I couldn't help myself or change my environment or situation the best I could do is try and help other people. It's kind of funny now looking back because a lot of the same signs and symptoms of not being ready to change I saw in others and getting frustrated I can go back and see in myself at certain times even though I was much further along in my journey to what I would call whole-istic (intentional spelling) health.
For a long time I obsessed over what was going on the world, what was going on around me. The importance of those things hasn't changed but over time I have spent less time worrying about what other people are doing and focusing more on building myself. I think working on yourself is the hardest thing to do and most people want to run 100 miles an hour in the other direction. People give plenty of excuses "I don't have the time" or "I'm too old" or...well we've heard them and perhaps even used them ourselves from time to time.
Activism, Religion, Sports, Video Games, Family, Friends, Jobs, there are a multitude of things getting in the way of us just really slowing down and taking the time to observe ourselves. We'd like to think we know who we are but most of us don't. Most don't understand the psychology that makes us tick at a deep fundamental level, most of us are living our lives vicariously through some medium or looking for salvation in some sort of externalized sources, either want someone else to do something for us, or we do something so we don't have to focus on it at all.
I'm not saying that all of these things are bad in and of themselves, and we all need time to unwind and decompress, I get that. I guess I'm just trying to push people a little bit, and look I get it. I've been there too, and hell sometimes knowing all this I still get caught up in the pull of all that stuff, but ultimately although it may sound cliche' this planet is the totality of all the people inhabiting it. As the old hermetic principle goes "As above, so below" I'm not saying you have to be perfect to get involved or call things wrong. The truth needs to be defended. What I'm saying is, do your best and put aside a good amount of time to get your own house in order too. The people you'll meet, the things you'll do will and be capable of doing will grow with that work and effort and with that be more effective, after all the only thing any of us have a right to control is our individual selves. Monarchy within, Anarchy without.
Now my goals are a little bigger, when I called my band Self Sufficient it wasn't because we were there, but it was a goal. The free exchange of ideas and the prosperity brought about by the willingness to learn and grow. I want to expand to have media of all kinds, and although the music I make and enjoy and changed my life still means just as much to me, I think it's also now a message worth sharing.
P.S.
For those interested my band can be found below:
https://www.facebook.com/selfsufficientband/
