Who Knew How Much a Cheesesteak Would Mean?
Ronan didn’t plan to go viral. Over the summer he was working as a line cook, doing an internship, building a business, and posting online every day. Most nights he got only an hour or two of sleep. Then, one shift at a local restaurant, his exhausted brain forgot he’d just dropped chips in the fryer. His chef could have just been angry. Instead, he noticed something was wrong. Ronan told him the truth about what he was going through, and the chef answered with a simple kindness: he made Ronan a cheesesteak. Ronan went out to his car, cried, and filmed the video that went on to reach thousands of people.
In this episode, Ronan, a 20-year-old junior at Virginia Tech, talks about burnout, the hundreds of messages he got from strangers (many of them parents), and what it was like to post himself crying online as a guy in a fraternity. Looking back, he describes that summer as a mental health crisis that looked like hustle from the outside. He also shares how it led him to an ADHD diagnosis and why he doesn’t let the label limit him: “It is genuinely a superpower. It’s all about how you frame it.”
We also talk about:
Why it matters to tell people when they’ve made a difference to you
What he changed to finally get real sleep
Being in therapy since high school and how it helps
Choosing to “be curious, not judgmental,” including toward yourself
His advice for young people who are chasing everything at once: “Not everything has to happen right now.”
This conversation is for young people pushing themselves to the edge and for the adults who want to notice when they are.
Follow Ronan’s work on Instagram @ronanbuilds.