After spending the last year and a half reflecting on many parts of my life and my relationship with clubs and Djing, I realised that for quite a long time I had been growing unhappy. Consciously or not, I have been putting my body and head through a huge amount of stress by playing every single gig that came to me over the last 12+ years and always trying to be everything to everyone. A huge part of this is because I *love* playing records for people; there is a side of it that I hadn’t noticed that was lurking and that was the competitive side both within myself and with others which for me has been exacerbated by the intertwining of social media and the music industry. Growing up as a gay man I have always subcosciously felt like I had to prove myself and make myself indispensable to people because of an innate fear that I would be rejected when they found out. I felt that even if they didn’t accept that part of me, at least I could say I was the very best at what I did. This is something that has taken me the best part of 20 years to understand and I’m still learning the ways it manifests itself. In a long winded way what I am saying is that moving forward I will be playing a lot less; not because I don’t love the act of playing records or being in clubs but because I want it to always occupy the deeply special place in my life that it did when I first got a pair of decks 20 years ago. Every time I play a party or a record I want it to be for the right reasons and because I value the importance of being trusted to guide those spaces musically. I think it is also important to be aware of the space we take up (in my case as a CIS White Gay Man) and I’m excited for the new faces and people who are (hopefully) going to fill the space. There are a lot of very inspiring DJs who are coming through right now who make me excited in a way I haven't felt for some time. 📸 by @jakephilipdavis