Every time I open a document to write, I expect to have some kind of movie moment where everything just… flows. The kind of moment where I know what I want to say, exactly how I want to say it, and at the end of 20 or so minutes of overdramatic typing and a couple cinematic camera shots with anticipatory music, I’ll have the perfect piece.

But that doesn’t happen. It’s anticlimactic, really; I open a new Google Doc, I think, I type, and I’m done. There isn’t any Oscar-worthy film produced at the end of it. It just happens, and then it doesn’t.

For the bulk of my life—my whole life, really—I’ve had this subconscious expectation that everything would just fall into place without any effort. Or, as I started to think at the beginning of high school, that the motivation needed for that effort would come naturally.

But it didn’t. My high expectations for my success were swiftly crushed with every subpar grade I received as a result of my complete lack of effort. But I still waited. I still kept waiting for the moments of motivation that I thought were entitled to me as a perk of being alive.

As my high school career comes to a close, I’ve realized that it just doesn’t work like that—it took the final three weeks for me to realize it. I learned that yes, I can have those movie moments that I used to imagine—I just have to step up to be the production team. And the editing team. And the director. And the writer. And the camera crew. Which, of course, it’s unfortunate that it took me so long to realize, but on the bright side, I have the entirety of summer to work on my work ethic for college.

Which leads me to my next point: time. Time is a cruel thief. Before I knew it, my childhood was over, and I was trapped in this awful mindset of it all being too late: too late to do anything worthwhile, too late to start a new hobby, or too late to turn in an assignment that’s way past due.

But it wasn’t. I was just so stuck in the familiarity of that mindset to take the time and step out of myself and see things for what they were.

There is still time—for whatever it is you want to do, you CAN do it. Do that assignment. Turn in those community service hours. Do that article for journalism that you procrastinated for an embarrassingly long time.

You still have time to be yourself. You still have time to wear the clothes you want to wear, to get that piercing or that haircut, to pick up the guitar and be brave enough to be a beginner despite the embarrassment you feel for not being as good as your peers. Because while that embarrassment will feel all-consuming and convince you that everyone around you thinks about you the same way you think about yourself, that isn’t the case.

Keep drawing. Keep writing. Keep doing what makes you happy. Keep doing what makes you YOU.

As my senior year comes to an end, I’ve realized that I am not the exception to the good things in life. Good things can and will happen—you just need to find the motivation and discipline within yourself to make it happen. It will be hard at first, and it will take time, but you have a lot of that.

To anybody reading this, whether you’re 14 or 40, there’s time. Feel everything. Do everything. Start over. Start over again.