I never imagined I would write anything that sounded like guidance. Most of my life has been spent trying to keep up with expectations I did not fully understand. I have learned more from mistakes than from insight, and even that feels accidental. If this is a how to, it is shaped by trial runs, revisions, and a long history of getting things right only after I got them wrong.
My biggest regret is that I waited to say things that needed to be said until the moment had already passed. I remember standing in a hallway once, unable to enter and unable to leave, knowing the words were there but not finding the courage to speak them. I stayed long enough for the moment to close on its own. Looking back, it feels like I put a tourniquet on entire relationships and then acted surprised when the limb eventually fell away. People need presence, not delayed intention, and I kept offering the wrong thing.
Daily life often feels like walking through a grocery store where I need something from every aisle and forget most of it until the last minute. Bills. Supplies. Conversations I owe. Basic tasks that seem manageable and then quietly slip out of control. There are days I open the fridge three times before remembering what I was looking for. None of this is dramatic. It is just the slow accumulation of small failures that build a version of adulthood that feels makeshift. Most days I carry a pit in my stomach and the weight of a truck on my chest, reacting a beat slower than the world expects.
People tell me I am a good teacher and a good medic, but the doubt extends far past work. I hear that I am a good son. A good friend. A good partner. A good person. None of these descriptions feel true to the person I know myself to be. I have learned how to appear steady. I have learned how to sound capable. But when someone compliments me, I nod and let the moment pass. I do not take any of it in. I can list too many instances where I was absent, unclear, late, or withdrawn. Those moments hold more weight than anyone’s praise.
It is strange to build a life that looks like competence while feeling disconnected from the image people reflect back at you. My career and stability suggest intention. In reality, much of it came from persistence rather than design. I kept arriving in situations I did not feel prepared for, and I learned them only by doing them badly first. It creates a mix of pride and embarrassment that never fully settles. Success that grows out of repetition instead of confidence feels unsteady. Like something I am holding temporarily.
When I think about how I keep going, I do not have a convincing explanation. It is not optimism or discipline. I am not driven by purpose or clarity. The closest answer I can give is that something in my wiring defaults to forward motion. Maybe genetics. Maybe habit. Maybe the simple fact that stopping feels too final. I get up, repeat what I know, and trust that familiarity can substitute for certainty.
The part of my life that stays with me the most is the effect I have had on people I cared about. I have watched people cry in front of me for reasons I caused and for reasons I could not fix. These moments do not fade. They influence how I speak now, how carefully I move, and how aware I am of the limits of my good intentions. If I could go back, I would not promise more. I would try harder in ways people could actually feel.
If this essay has any purpose, it is to acknowledge a life built from incomplete attempts. I am not writing as someone who found clarity. I am writing as someone who kept living despite feeling unprepared for most of it. A man who could not, but did anyway. Someone who learned that progress does not always come from confidence. Sometimes it comes from inertia. Sometimes from habit. Sometimes from the simple desire to not let a story end unfinished.
How to live this way does not come down to a set of steps. The closest I can offer is this: accept that your life will not always resemble the version you imagined. Accept that your intentions will not always protect the people you love. Accept that success may arrive without feeling like success. Accept that you may never feel entirely right in your own skin. And accept that continuing is sometimes the only reliable achievement you will recognize.
I am not trying to turn any of this into a lesson. I am just trying to tell the truth as I understand it now. If there is anything useful in that, it is only because most of us are quietly trying to figure out how to live with the person we have been and the person we are still becoming.
Ghosts of the Navigator 