I have always loved music, my mom says that I used to dance in front of the stereo speakers when I was two years old, I don’t remember this but all I can say is that I guess I haven’t changed all that much because I still spend a lot of time dancing in front of speakers – I am a DJ and the speakers are now much larger and are part of my DJ equipment that I take to gigs.

I started collecting my DJ equipment in my teens; I never wanted to be anything else. I had cans, a turntable and heaps of CD’s and records and a player and some old speakers my Dad had given me. I would pile my DJ equipment into the back of my Dad’s station wagon and he would drive me to whatever gig was on that weekend.

I would play tunes on my DJ equipment till the early hours of the morning watching the kids dancing along to my music and having a good time. It was only underage gigs that I played before I was 20 years old, events that were alcohol free. I would set up my DJ equipment and play to kids my own age and younger, all of the popular tunes that we loved at the time.
Even though my dad supported me and would drive me around with my DJ equipment before I had my licence or a car he thought that it was a phase. He never thought that I would think of a full time career as a DJ and that one day my DJ equipment would lie dusty and unused in a corner of the garage.

When I finished high school he sat me down and we had a serious talk about what I was going to do with my life, what college I wanted to go to the regular deal. When I told him that I didn’t want to go to college that I wanted to be a full time DJ with my DJ equipment he got so mad that I thought that he was going to have a heart attack he went so red in the face.
He yelled a bit, well actually he yelled a lot saying that he only helped me with my DJ equipment because he thought that it was a good hobby but it wasn’t a career. He told me that I would never make any money as a DJ and he locked my DJ equipment up so that I couldn’t get to it. He said that I could have my DJ equipment back when I had come to my senses.

I knew that I was serious and that my dad taking my DJ equipment was not going to stop me being a DJ, it was what I was born to be so that night, to avoid further fights with my dad I packed up my favourite clothes and things and headed off to hitch hike to the city, nothing was going to stop me from following my dream. I only had a couple of hundred dollars to my name when I left home but I knew that I could crash with a friend of mine Josh when I arrived in the city.

Josh was a DJ too and over the next few months he helped me find some temporary gigs and he leant me his old DJ equipment that he didn’t use any more until I could scrape enough money together to buy my own DJ equipment again.
I didn’t speak to my father but I spoke to my mother regularly. Dad was still mad and wouldn’t speak to me on the phone and my mother kept pleading with me to come home. I knew that I needed to make my own way in the world and that gong home would make that impossible, I would be expected to follow what my father wanted and that wasn’t good enough for me, I had DJ equipment to use so I could follow my dream.

Fast forward a couple of years and things had changed dramatically. The first year I had been sleeping on the couch at Josh’s apartment, using his old DJ equipment and working gigs wherever I could find them – usually at pretty rough clubs with only a few people there.

In the second year I had earned enough to get a small apartment of my own, had bought some basic but good DJ equipment of my own and was building a pretty good reputation around town for being a good DJ which had won me a regular spot at one of the bigger and more popular nightspots.

And three years after moving out of home I had state of the art DJ equipment and had earned a residency at the biggest nightclub and was playing 5 nights a week But even better I had also been named DJ of the year by a local radio station who were holding an awards dinner to honour me and present the prize.

I had invited my parents to attend the dinner with me, I wanted to show them that I was making a success of my life in my chosen career and that even though my father took my DJ equipment away from me I had become a success anyway.
They came to the dinner and my father even shook my hand, I could see the look of apology in his eyes and when I accepted the award I looked over at my father and he had a tear in his eye and afterwards he told me that it was the proudest night of his life.