When I was in preschool, my dad signed me up to play soccer. The only thing I remember about it is wearing a shirt 20 sizes too big, getting a trophy for participation after the last game, and crying because I didn't want to go to practice. So, once that season was over, I never played soccer on a team again.
In elementary school, I was on the swim team for a total of two days. I've always loved swimming, but when I showed up late to the first practice and the coach threw me in the deepest end of the pool and told me to do backstroke, I freaked out a little bit and quit the next day.
I did gymnastics for a little while, and ballet/tap dancing when I was young, and I did enjoy that but didn't stick with it for very long.
Looking back at everything I've done, music is the one thing that I stuck with forever. In Kindergarten, I started choir at my church, and I stayed in that choir until I moved to a different state. Now, I am auditioning to be a member of the Women's Chorus in college.
In high school, I participated in some of the school musicals and was in theater class for three years. In fourth grade, I started playing in my school's band on the cornet, and I continued to play cornet until I graduated high school. Once I came to college, I started playing in the marching band on trumpet. In second grade, I took piano lessons. While I stopped taking lessons long ago, I still teach myself new songs and I love playing piano for my church and just at home for fun.
When I was 13, I wanted to be like Taylor Swift and got my first acoustic guitar for Christmas. I never took lessons for it, but watched YouTube videos and picked it up extremely quickly. I still love to play guitar to this day. One of my cousins gave me her old clarinet when I was in eighth grade, and I took it to a music store to learn how to play it. When I told them I was a brass player and had never played a woodwind instrument, they said it would be several months before I would actually be able to learn to play, since the mouth placement was so different. I took the clarinet home and after a day of nothing but squeaky sounds, I was able to play a scale the next day.
Currently, I am trying to learn how to play violin, which is one of the harder instruments for me to learn, as well as mandolin, which I recently got a few weeks ago.
I tell my story not to brag about what a great musician I am, but to ask: why music? Why have I stuck with music all these years, rather than sports or anything else? Why does music come so naturally to me? I believe it is because music is my gift. Many people listen to music, but only some people enjoy playing music. That is the same with sports. Many people watch sports on TV, but only some people are great athletes.
Everyone has a unique gift, whether you're an athlete, a cook, a painter, a writer, a dancer, a singer, an accountant, or a teacher, or you might have any combination of gifts. When you discover your unique talents, passions, and gifts, you can use them to uplift and encourage others to find their own gifts. The world is so diverse, yet there's only one you. Often, your gift is something that you can't seem to live without.
