One thing I genuinely love about living with my parents is that, no matter how much they don’t always agree with my choices or ideas, they encourage me.
The other day my dad asked, “Whatever happened to that book you started writing back in 2019?”
I shrugged it off. I told him it was a silly concept, that I realized how many other stories it resembled, and eventually I just abandoned it.
The truth is, I come from an incredibly creative family, but I’ve never really considered myself a creative person.
My dad is an artist at heart. Back in the early 2000s, he taught himself computer animation just because he thought it was fun. Before that, he’d make little claymation videos. He never wanted to turn it into a career—he just loved creating.
My mom is constantly making something. She can sew, crochet, and has always been incredibly tactile. Growing up, so many of my Halloween costumes were handmade by her. More recently, when I mentioned wanting to open a bakery someday, she surprised me by sewing me two custom aprons.
My brother has always been the musical one. I can read sheet music after years of playing the violin, but my brother has something you can’t really teach—a natural ear for rhythm and harmony.
And then there’s my sister, who’s literally a tattoo artist. She draws, she paints, and she sees things others don’t
Compared to all of them, I always felt like I couldn’t make anything.
I can’t draw.
I can’t paint.
I can’t sculpt.
So somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that food and words didn’t count.
Which is kind of ridiculous when I actually think about it.
I love literature. I love storytelling. I have an incredibly strong sense of taste and smell. I can usually taste a dish and figure out most of the ingredients without ever looking at the recipe. I can recreate recipes by instinct more often than not.
But for some reason, I never saw those things as creativity.
So I told my dad about the book. How I kept stopping. How I’d tried NaNoWriMo multiple times and never finished. How I always found a reason to quit before I really got started.
Instead of giving me a speech, he showed me a low-budget movie someone had uploaded to YouTube.
It’s only about an hour long. It’s not some cinematic masterpiece. It doesn’t have a huge budget or famous actors.
But someone had a story they wanted to tell.
After we watched it, he asked me one simple question:
“Do you have a story you want to tell?”
And my answer was yes.
I do.
It’s scary to think about putting months—or years—into writing a book that hardly anyone may ever read. It’s scary knowing it might never become a bestseller or get published by a major publisher.
But maybe that’s not the point.
Maybe it’ll be like that little YouTube movie.
Maybe only a handful of people ever find it.
Maybe one person reads it at exactly the right moment.
Maybe it captures someone’s attention just enough to make them think, I could tell my story too.
And honestly, I think that’s enough of a reason to write it.
