Something that you might not know about me (yet!) is that I play the clarinet and tenor sax.

Do you remember the geeky girl in American Pie who goes on about band camp? Yep, that was me in school. Except we only went to camp once. And I’m pretty sure my high school experience was nothing like it is in the film! 😉

These days I only play clarinet in church on a Sunday. It’s fun though and suits me because I’m far better at playing the clarinet than I am singing, so everybody wins.

So on Sunday I was playing along, doing my thing, and I noticed something funny that I’ve never noticed before. In one of the songs, I kind of take a bit of artistic licence and don’t exactly play what’s written in the music.

It sounds pretty and works just fine but, what I noticed on Sunday was that, after playing it that same way for probably several years, everyone now sings it the way I play it.

If the composer of the song were to hear it, he might not be that impressed, but we’ve taken an already nice song, tweaked it, and made it our own.

Pretty cool I thought.

And then I got to thinking about life. You know how sometimes you do things a little differently? And maybe the first time you do it, either no one appears to even notice or they look at you a bit funny because you’ve done it ‘wrong’?

But you keep on doing your thing.

And then one day, someone, just one person, decides to sing your tune. And so now there’s two of you, doing things differently. Sticking out. Doing it ‘wrong’.

You have an ally and it feels good.

And together you keep on keeping on until who knows, maybe you go on to inspire a whole load more people to do it the ‘wrong’ way and you wake up one day to find you’ve actually made a difference on this planet.

But if you’d have just stuck to the right way of doing things, the way everyone else was doing it, you’d have never even known what was possible.

Sometimes it feel uncomfortable to do things the wrong way. At the very beginning it can even feel lonely.

But I’m here today to encourage you to keep on keeping on.

Don’t give up.

Don’t give in.

Keep on.