“…You’re not a fan of me, you’re a fan of yourself.”

I am gonna start this whole thing off with a quote from Kanye West.

TRIGGER WARNING: Mention of suicide

Irrespective of how you feel about the man, this particular line from his 2013 interview with radio DJ host Zane Lowe has meant something different to me every time I have re-watched that interview in the years since.

2013

I remember first hearing Kanye say those words and thinking to myself that his music represented to me the same thing that it meant to many of his other fans. Kanye’s music became a way to get yourself out of bed in the morning or whenever you were feeling like giving up. His music was the perfect mixture of ingredients that I cherished at that particular moment in time when I was in my second year of undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto.

At that time, I did want to give up. I was majoring in Environmental Studies and English with the endgame of using knowledge gained in those fields to become a teacher. I convinced myself that my intuition was guiding me, when in fact it was just me jumping onto a roller-coaster and simply being too scared to get off after the first go-around.

2016

The winter of 2016 was particularly bad for my mental health. After struggling with social anxiety and depression for the better part of my life and choosing to do nothing about it other than drown myself in video games, I hit a bit of a rock bottom in my life. I was ready to give up and kill myself. I convinced myself of every negative thought I’ve ever had, including but not limited to:

• “You’ll never be smart enough to work a good job…”
• “You’ll never be a father; no girl will ever like you…”
• “You don’t deserve happiness…”

I was almost ready to actually act on my suicidal ideation, but something stopped me. To this day, I’m not sure what prevented me from killing myself. I dropped out of school and took up a job at a restaurant that required me to have some long hour-long commutes. This job was just me trading one vice (video-game addiction) for another (becoming a workaholic).

This was also the same year that some of my now-favourite musical records came out. I won’t say these records saved my life, but they had a profound effect on me. To name a few of those records, there was Blonde by Frank Ocean, The Powers That B by Death Grips, To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar, and The Life of Pablo by Kanye West.

In preparation for the release of The Life of Pablo, I re-watched that interview with Zane Lowe. Kanye’s words once again echoed in my head, except this time I decided that I would trade all my previous vices for a singular, dedicated love of music to save me. This was my new proposed solution, but it was only a half-measure.

2021

Quite a bit has happened in the last five years for me. I won’t pretend for the sake of a concise narrative that the positive changes came from a deeper understanding of a Kanye West quote, but here I am now neck-deep in what I consider to be the most exciting time in my life.

After finally enrolling with therapeutic services after neglecting my mental health for over a decade, I decided that I needed to not only soak in creativity through my love of music, I needed to BE creative. This thought process led me to a place called Juno College. It started with an intro to web development course in the fall of 2020. Now I am proud to say I am enrolled in the web development Bootcamp with the amazing people in cohort 33. For the first time in my life, I found a creative outlet that FELT right for me.

I decided to revisit that interview again two weeks ago, in preparation for the start of Juno’s Bootcamp. It took me eight years to finally realize I didn’t have to love Kanye West’s music, or music in general, to love myself. I just needed to love myself.

Those genuine, inspired feelings of self-love that I sometimes get, I hope to pass on to others too. When I learn from my mentors at Juno and when I eventually pass on what I learn to others, I hope to inspire similar feelings of self-love in those people.

If I am a fan of you, I am a fan of myself.

If you are a fan of me, you are a fan of yourself.

Thanks for reading.