Today is September 13, 2025, and all I can objectively say is this: I’m a 45-year-old git. The rest is “nothing but my own meandering experience” — or, for that matter, my completely subjective opinion). I have a beautiful wife, a baby daughter, and a very cute (and even more stubborn) toy poodle. They are my anchors.
But getting here hasn’t been straightforward.
I grew up in what you might call an underprivileged childhood (“underprivileged” by standards of western, developed societies). My parents divorced when I was three, and from that moment on I was shifted here and there, never fully rooted, never fully secure. That instability became the foundation for many of the bad decisions I would later make. Through my 20’s and 30’s, I carried this heritage with me—drifting, stumbling, chasing easy ways out.
The shortcuts I reached for over the years turned out to be the longest detours of all.
Looking back, I see how much of that came from not being taught to endure; I wasn’t shown how to persist through hardship, how to build steadily, how to stay with difficulty until something good emerged. The shortcuts I reached for over the years turned out to be the longest detours of all.
By the time I entered my 40’s, the weight of all this caught up with me. Life pressed hard! Wrestling with that pressure has been some of the most difficult work I’ve done, but also the beginning of a huge transformation. Therapy, family, building a home—all of these have become part of the pivot. Slowly, I’m turning toward growth rather than escape.
It’s been humbling to realize that, while I may not be as far along in life’s external measures as I had once hoped, I’ve traveled far on the inner path. And maybe that counts for something. If the universe and my health allow, I hope the next 40 years will be lived differently: with endurance, persistence, wiser choices, and the courage to build. A life shaped not by shortcuts, but by steady, good decisions. A life of growth.
That’s my story — or at least, the part I feel I can offer, in case it helps some of you who were brought here by winds of your own “unfinished dough“, still sticky and messy, but already on its way to becoming bread.
Love, Alex