About This Site

About Ryan Woerner

I suppose I should backtrack a bit. My name is Ryan Woerner, which you probably know, because you typed my name in to get here. I don’t necessarily feel the need to introduce myself on my own website, but it’s important for SEO that I get that in there. 

So that we are formally acquainted: I was born in Abington, Pennsylvania and spent the first 18 years of my life in Abington, Pennsylvania before deciding that I ought to go to college. Four years later I graduated from Millersville University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Speech Communication and an option in Public Relations. Very little happened to me in between those two events.

Past the simple demographics, I am mostly someone who enjoys making people laugh. I initially wrote “seeing and hearing people laugh” because that felt less vain, but I realized after writing it out that any vanity I lost was more than made up for with an abundance of creepiness.  Creepiness aside, laughter and comedy are central foci of my faily life. While some people can sink their entire being into their career, their relationships, their hobbies, or their faith, mine remains firmly sunk in hilarity. On his podcast, Conan O’Brien mentions that comedy is like a religion to him. If that’s true, I’d be happy to join his sect and attend a house of worship for the first time in as long as I can remember.

I used to absolutely hate being asked what I was passionate about. Attempting to avoid this question while meeting a new person is like trying to avoid being asked your name, what you do for a living, or why you didn’t stop when you hit that kid on your bike. When asked this, I’ve often stumbled to come up with an answer. I like writing and reading? And sports, and Google Sheets? I enjoy feeling like I’m helping people? And I’m pretty clean, I like cleaning. Do those count as passions or are they more hobbies? Maybe fixations? Cleaning definitely shouldn’t be in there either way.

But I’ve come to realize in recent years that I do have a passion – I enjoy comedy, passionately. 

I’m not a comedian, nor do I ever intend to become one. Genuinely, I’m not funny enough for that. I’m not even the funniest guy I know, nor am I the funniest guy anyone I know knows. But I enjoy surrounding myself with comedy more than anything else in life. If you’ve been in my apartment, you’ve probably heard an almost endless stream of My Brother, My Brother and Me, or Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend — two comedy podcasts that have both filled the noiseless void of my apartment endessly in recent years and have almost certainly had some tangible impact on the shape, size, or folds of my brain. During the onset of the pandemic, I spoke to others about how the voices of the McElroy brothers making jokes was, in some odd way, comforting and familiar during a weird and isolating time. Comedy literally calmed me down and eased my anxiety in addition to, you know, making me laugh. I spent a year of my life as a landscaper, primarily responsible for the weed whacking of various properties. I was routinely made fun of by my coworkers for choosing to listen to stand up comedy in my earbuds while I worked, rather than the more traditional choices of music, or speaking to other people. I have no regrets.

I’ve surrounded myself in life almost exclusively with people who make me laugh. If you aren’t funny and you find yourself around me, you likely provide me with some other life-nurturing benefit; perhaps you’re very wealthy, very kind, or very physically attractive. But more than likely you’re funny, because that’s what I tend to prioritize most. 

So on this site, you’ll find some of my writing. It’s not all going to be funny; not because some of the stories are more serious in tone (though that’s true as well) but because I write most of these stories to make me laugh, not you.

Currently, I live and work in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.