Growing Up Without a Manual.

Some people grow up with a roadmap.

Advice, guidance, someone explaining how the world works and what to do when you get there. I didn’t really have that. A lot of my life has felt like figuring things out in real time… sometimes the hard way.

Growing up, money was always a source of tension in my house. There were constant arguments about it. The price of cigarettes, the cost of this, the cost of that. Even small things felt heavy. We moved around a lot, and as I got older I started realizing that stability was something my parents were struggling to create for themselves too. Looking back now, I understand that they were doing the best they could with the tools they had.

But what that meant for me was learning a lot of things on my own.

Especially when it came to planning for the future. Saving money, understanding responsibility, thinking long term. Those were concepts I had to slowly piece together as I grew up. Even now, at 31, I’m still learning. Life doesn’t exactly hand you a guidebook, and when you grow up without one, you end up building it page by page yourself.

The funny thing is, while some parts of life felt uncertain, I always had very clear dreams.

When I was a kid, all I wanted was to dance. I wanted to dance on television. I wanted to travel the world. I wanted to be a household name. Those dreams felt huge compared to the life I was living at the time. Traveling alone seemed impossible. My family didn’t go anywhere. Up until I was eighteen years old, the only trip I had ever taken was a drive to Maine with a girlfriend.

I didn’t even step onto a plane for the first time until I was married to a flight attendant.

When I think about that now, it’s wild. The kid who barely left his surroundings eventually found himself flying, traveling, and building a life that younger me wouldn’t have even known how to imagine.

There was another simple dream I had growing up that still makes me smile.

I always wanted an apartment with stairs.

It sounds small, but when you grow up in certain circumstances, those little things represent something bigger. Stability. Comfort. A space that feels like your own. Eventually I got that too. I lived in a townhouse for two years, and every apartment I’ve had since then has felt like a reflection of the life I once dreamed about. The artwork, the plants, the energy of the space… it’s always been important to me.

Sometimes I stop and imagine what the younger version of myself would think if he could see me now.

I think he’d probably say something like, “Damn… you actually did it.”

Not perfectly. Not without mistakes. Not without ups and downs. But I kept going.

And maybe that’s the real lesson of growing up without a manual.

When nobody hands you instructions, you become the person who writes them. You learn through trial and error. Through curiosity. Through resilience. Through refusing to give up on the life you imagine for yourself.

The truth is, I’m still figuring things out.

But the kid I used to be would probably be pretty proud of the man I’m becoming.