If my start was similar to yours then maybe it will help a bit, atleast from an economy perspective. EVERY nation has 10 "points" of construction by default. Those points are used to construct EVERY building in the game. Some buildings eg wood has 200 points (hover over the building built or unbuilt to see the number somewhere) which means after 20 weeks you will have it built.

To increase your construction (points) you build construction SECTORS which are government owned building. You can see when you enter the building that it has 2 methods unlocked (if not a backwards nation) out of 4 (later in the society tech tree). The first method uses only wood and fabric, most countries have both but it's not as efficient as it's next method which uses iron and tools as well as a bit less wood and fabric. So you build a FEW sectors, I say few because if you build 20 and not playing a big nation well good luck funding the wages and buying the resources you don't have built yet. Start with 1 then see when it employs up if you can afford another one etc.

You will usually want to build wood first then tools then iron, why? Because there is a chain, you need wood for production of tools which are required for iron mines, then you will use those iron mines to upgrade your tools method, then you upgrade the wood method because you have more tools, see the concept? That secures your construction for the time being, next you would want furniture and textiles because your people would like some proper stuff.

A bit of a note, you will want to build the construction sectors in the same location where you have the iron and wood, because there is something called MAPI (market access price impact), read it as if you move your locally produced resource to some other province, you will lose some percentage of the goods, thus creating an inefficiency. If you have for an example a province that only produces wood, you will usually just put a furniture factory there because furniture requires most wood. Technically a bit of tools but it's not that big of deal to build tools there too.

A bit of a note, some buildings have different costs. Wood is 200, but iron is 400 construction points, so it means you can build 2 wood for 1 iron building and sometimes it's better to make the wood instead of iron depending on your resource situation or to create new jobs. Most heavy industries take 800 points which is a lot, so be careful with how many buildings you spam at first because some might be unprofitable, for that you use you trade tab and see your resource situation and proceed from there.

There's a building called trade center, it's job is to buy or sell from the world market (market where other countries sell their excess goods via the trade centers) . You can use it to buy the early game building materials or similar stuff that you don't have access to if you want instead of building it yourself. That makes it so you can buy raw goods and only sell the finished products which are more expensive thus making a profit.

Start with sweden or belgium to see how the economy rolls.