That talent is not a substitute for hard work. Also, not to make gravy when drunk.

Edit:

Oh right, you asked for the story too. Well, for the first part . . . I have found that I can pick up lots of things pretty quickly and can become decent at doing them in a short amount of time. However, when I was young I found that people would praise me for this trait and so I would just kind of coast along until challenged. In this way, I ended up giving up on math because I just really didn't want to put the work in and I couldn't be bothered to try to understand that once I had the fundamentals down, a whole new set of interesting things would be open for me to explore.

This goes for athletics too. I thought that since what I liked to do athletically came easily, that I didn't have to work on it and so ended up neglecting my training, smoking, drinking, etc. and it took me years to understand that doing something every day helps to improve things even if one can't really see the difference day to day. I guess this is also part of why I didn't write anything for about five years.

Lots of people told me that hard work is no substitute for talent, but I didn't really get it until I'd experienced it for myself. I can be pretty stubborn and that's something I work on, in addition to lots of other stuff I feel like I'm catching up on these days.

As for the gravy thing, I have a sizable scar on my arm. Lesson learned.