Financially Poor. Experientially Rich.

I Returned Home With Nothing. Except a Life Worth Writing About.

Essaouira, Morocco

I did not know I wanted to be a writer until I was 21.

For months I had found myself daydreaming with such childlike passion. Reflections of formative moments from my adolescence, vivid recounts of pains and unhealed wounds as a teenager blended with beautiful realizations of my recent adventures and hours of reflective pondering.

By then I was finishing my 3rd year of college, and I was an Economics major, my second stop having started out in Communications. I hated every second I spent learning about bull markets, gross GDP and whatever else economics majors learn about (I could hardly force myself to pay attention any longer). As the end of the year approached, failure wafted my way like a carton of spoiled milk, and the closer I got to final exams, the more clearly I could taste its sour tang. With one week left in my junior year I decided I could no longer pretend to be invested in a pursuit of which I had no stock. Continuing down this path, I gathered, would not be remotely economical.

I’d always been curious about how easy I’d found it to wield a pen to great avail. But never had I entertained the idea seriously. It’s funny how the truth finds us at the most peculiar times and places.

One day, it was like being grabbed by the collar and told the beautiful truth. And I knew. The art of storytelling, of taking real moments of my life and marrying them with my creativity - this pursuit called to me. Never had I felt a pull so strong. I was suddenly impassioned. I knew what I was meant to do with my life.

The moment I decided to be a writer, my life became poetic.

To quote the great Walt Whitman:

“If you want to know where your heart is, look to where your mind goes when it wanders.”

After years of aimless wandering and searching for purpose, I’d found my heart.

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The moment of truth came to me at the end of an incredible year I spent abroad. Four months in Europe and four down under. A year I detailed in depth in my piece:

Up until the moment I left for Europe, I had never truly felt comfortable in my own skin.

I had made friends. I had chapters of my life that I looked back on fondly. But what always managed to pull me off course was one simple truth: I had no idea what I was passionate about. Without something of my own to guide me, I followed the paths of those around me. Every major decision I made seemed to mirror someone else’s. I was constantly moving forward, but rarely toward something that was truly mine.

Though I was a free thinker, I was not a free actor.

And deep down, I knew this truth. And I hated myself for it. That internal conflict revealed itself in my bouts of depression, my lack of self-confidence, my self-loathing, and the self-pity that often kept me hidden away in my dorm room—a sidelined participant in my own life. I became known for my moods and my unpredictability. One night, I would be the life of the party, riding the high of some fleeting inspiration, only to retreat into myself in the days that followed, watching that spark slowly fade into wisps of despair. I had no passion to anchor me. No purpose to point the way forward. So I allowed life to push me wherever it wanted.

Back then, I didn’t have the perspective I have now. I didn’t understand that sometimes getting lost is a necessary reckoning—to stop following someone else’s map and begin drawing my own.

However, at that time, I didn’t know my place in the world.

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Two years prior, I had watched my older brother, Dante morph into a more confident, creative, and assured version of himself through his adventures abroad his junior year of college. While most people who go abroad do only one semester, Dante, who had already decided that videography was his passion, not the sports management degree he was halfway along with, decided to venture to Florence and then to Hawaii on a domestic exchange, with the intention of indulging his passions and taking the scenic route through school.

That year, he lived by this principle:

You have to be willing to venture beyond your comfort zone in order to grow.

And grow, he did.

Dante returned as a changed man. And he brought with him, memories of his travels, creatively assembled and preserved through an incredible video that I still watch every single year:

As Dante’s world expanded, so did he. And so my junior year, inspired by Dante, I too left my comfort zone in the dust.

But, enough about that year. For more on that, see: The Australia Effect. It is a later chapter of my life however that is the focus of this piece.

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Flashback to May of 2024.

I received my diploma—a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Massachusetts. An entire English major completed in the span of a single year. It felt like a miracle. I was exhausted. Relieved. In disbelief. And, in all honesty, I was... lost.

Something felt wrong.

This was to be the end of my education. Yet somehow, it felt like only the beginning. I had reached the finish line, only to realize I wasn’t ready to stop running. Yes, I had proven that I could write exceptional literary essays. But aside from a handful of poetry assignments, I’d been given little room for genuine creativity. I hadn’t written a short story. I hadn’t learned the art of screenwriting. How does one write for the screen differently than for the page? I didn’t know.

Then came the thought of applying for jobs. What, exactly, did I have to show for myself? No manuscript for a novel. Never mind a screenplay. Hardly a short story to my name. What connections had I made in the industry? What career even existed for someone in my position? Just as soon as I was hatched into this new world, I was to be thrown out of the nest. And I couldn’t help feeling that I hadn’t earned my wings yet.

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Immediately, my mind drifted back to the year I had spent traveling.

The venturing into the unknown, far beyond everything familiar, had revealed truths and paths of opportunity that I never would have discovered had I stayed home. And now, here I was again, standing at another crossroads. But was this the same? Was the pull toward another adventure a genuine calling, or merely the temptation to run from a future that felt uncertain?

I wasn’t sure. Something about this time felt different.

I was no longer searching for my calling. I’d already found it. Rather I was searching for the bridge that might lead me to it. This writer’s life—it was all so very new. And so far, my path had been anything but conventional. I’d missed out on three years of writing workshops, mentorship, connections, and time that could have been spent creating work representative of my abilities. That was the simple truth.

But so was this.

In just one year, I’d accumulated life experiences that some people go their entire lives without. My greatest disadvantage had also become my greatest advantage. My perspective was unlike anyone else’s. It was around this time that I came across a film that would become one of my all-time favorites. And from the moment I heard this one simple yet profound line, it became a source of inspiration that has stayed with me ever since.

“A writer is the sum of their experiences. Go get some.”

I took that to heart.

Sometimes, I gathered, the best thing you can do as a writer is put down the pen and truly live.

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So, I took on a job as a travel guide in Florence, Italy.

A fast-paced, high stakes, albeit low paying job that would take me all over Europe and Northern Africa, leading hundreds of students on their study abroad semester through foreign countries on buses, ferries, ziplines, camelback, party boats, pub crawls – you name it. A position that required extroversion, public speaking, and high functions in the face of severe sleep deprivation on a consistent basis. And let me tell you, life moved fast.

Over the year and a half that followed, I experienced more than I ever thought possible. Even now, I’ve only begun to tell the stories that those months gave me. I shared more laughter than I could ever recount with friends who had been strangers only days before. I no longer shook at the thought of public speaking. I witnessed things that left me stunned, and I met people who reminded me just how much I had always taken for granted.

I ate some of the finest food in the world—and some of the worst. I learned to cook for myself, then invited others to gather around the table with me. I spent nights on hard, dusty floors and others on seaside cliffs beneath crisp white sheets. I found love where I least expected to. I watched people come into my life just as quickly as they disappeared from it. I learned that some of the most meaningful moments are also the most fleeting. I can’t remember another year in which I felt life so deeply.

But it couldn’t last. Not forever.

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The time came when I’d look back through my rearview mirror as the vehicle of my adventures coughed and slowed, pulling onto the shoulder. Dashboard lights illuminating a tired face beneath a constellation of warning symbols. Though they signaled the end of the journey, the lit up count on the odometer and the bald tires spoke of a chapter well-lived. Every scratch, every dent, every blemish had been earned—each one a token of memory. Oh, what that vehicle would say if it could talk.

Then again, that vehicle is me. And better still—it can write.

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I came home from Europe this past Christmas completely broke.

My bank account was empty. My body was running on fumes. At barely 150 pounds, I had spent my final month abroad surviving on fast food (with the occasional salad thrown in for balance). My last remaining dollars went toward the plane ticket that would carry me back home. I was lost. I was sad. I was uncertain about what came next. But I was not poor.

Oh no.

In terms of money—yes, I had none. But in terms of life, my stock had skyrocketed. You see, I had skin in the game. And what a game it had been.

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Once again, I found myself at the beginning of a new chapter. Yet this time, I sensed something different. I was no longer simply a character being carried along by the plot—the author’s chair was waiting, and I was finally ready to take my place.

I had spent years wielding the sword. Now, I was ready to pick up the pen.

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It has been seven months since I touched down on home soil. And it’s no secret that I have not yet written my masterpiece.But you should know this:

I have never in my life felt so inspired.

I wake before work, and I write. In a dark, dingy basement that never sees the morning sun, I disappear into a world of my own creation—a world that, day by day, grows a little more vivid, a little more real. Every person I’ve met. Every conversation I’ve had. Every moment I’ve lived—from the mundane to the extraordinary, from the pleasurable to the pathetic—has become source material for lives and places that have never existed before. For a writer is nothing more than the sum of his experiences. Every joy. Every failure. Every heartbreak. Every triumph. Every experience I’ve earned, no matter how beautiful or how brutal, is another gift entrusted to me—one that, in time, will find its way onto the page.

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Perspective is a powerful thing.

In five months, I will turn twenty-five years old. I have no real savings. I’m back living with my parents. I’m working the same job I had when I was fourteen. On the surface, you may feel sorry for me. But the surface does not reflect the truth.

Beneath it, I am well traveled. I’ve lived on three different continents. I’ve made lifelong friends and unforgettable memories around the world. I’ve discovered what I’m passionate about, and, one day at a time, I’m pursuing it.

When you’re traveling down a poorly marked path that few before you have traversed, it’s only right to let instinct be your compass. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always loved writing more than math or science. There is no single right answer waiting to be discovered. There is only the answer that feels true—the one that captures something real. So as I navigate this uncertain future, I try not to overanalyze. I follow my instincts. I focus on creating. Every leap of faith I’ve taken has led me somewhere I never could have planned, and I trust the next one will too.

I am determined to succeed. To share my stories with the world. Because I believe I was meant to tell them. And every detour, every setback, every unexpected turn only makes the story better.

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Each chapter of my life has been defined by a concept or a quote. During my first stint abroad, I carried an idea I learned from my brother Dante Borgese

“"Growth only happens when we venture beyond our comfort zone.”

For my second stint, post-college, I carried the words of writer and filmmaker Josh Boone, so eloquently delivered by Greg Kinnear’s character, William Borgens, in the 2012 independent film Stuck in Love:

And now, as my current chapter unfolds, it is the words of author, Steven Pressfield that occupy much of my conscience. His catalog is endless, but one particular quote has stuck with me since the moment I heard it:

“I am never lonely writing because I am with my characters.”

This perspective is everything.

Writing is, by nature, a solitary and deeply personal pursuit. Yet I believe what writers crave most is not isolation, but connection. As a creator myself, my greatest dream is to watch my work bring others closer together.

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As the summer leaves turn brown and the days grow shorter, loneliness will attempt to find its way into my life. There is no denying that. But buried within my work, I find companionship—not only in the characters I create, but in every person, place, and experience that has shaped me. Because writing is not an escape from the world. It is my way of preserving it. Every story I write is a conversation with the life I have lived and the people I have yet to meet.

Perhaps that is the greatest gift of this calling:

To sit alone in the act of creation while knowing that

somewhere…

someday…

the words I write may find someone who truly need them.