I’ve always admired people who have talent. People who don’t need to explain who they are because their work speaks for itself. They just do what they do, and they excel at it.

Take Virginia Woolf, for example. She was an incredibly talented writer. In spite of everything she went through in life—the affair, the depression, and even the tragedy of her suicide—she left behind unforgettable words. She excelled through it all. How magnificent is that?

I’ve always wished I could be a good writer, someone who influences people with words. I’m not there yet, but I’ll write anyway—because that’s what I want to do. I want to share what’s in my head. Writing makes me happy. It gives me a sense of purpose.

I can’t do what other writers do—use big words or make their sentences sound intellectual with commas and colons everywhere. I only know simple words, so I’ll stick to what I know. If I focus on what I can’t do, I’ll never do anything at all. So I choose to focus on what I can do, and keep going.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. One of my biggest struggles is focus. Every day I set out to do one thing, and I end up doing something else. My mind feels scattered. Sometimes it frustrates me so much that I cry. But whenever I come back to what I love—designing or writing—I feel calm again. It puts me back on track.

Writing makes me feel important. It reminds me of me. In my busy life, I often forget myself. I think about my work, my kids, my spouse, my friends, my family, my church, my groceries, and my bills. At the end of the day, I lie down in bed feeling incomplete. I fall asleep incomplete. And by the time I wake up, I’ve forgotten about those feelings because I’m already back in the cycle of everything I need to do. Once again, I forget about me.

This cycle of forgetting is not good. It makes me waste time and ignore my gifts. I truly believe each one of us has a gift. We just need to find it. That gift is the key to happiness.

Life is too short to ignore the things that make us feel alive. Trust your crazy idea, because that might be the very gift that changes your life.