To be clear, it wasn't that my parents discouraged music from the get-go; they discouraged me from taking music seriously. In high school I taught myself to pl

To be clear, it wasn't that my parents discouraged music from the get-go; they discouraged me from taking music seriously. In high school I taught myself to play four instruments, went into a studio and recorded a single for an indy compilation CD with my band and spent most of my free money and time on music stuff. The contrast was that while I was buying new instruments with money I made from mowing lawns and working at a burger joint, my parents still complained about me wasting the money on them. When my sister began taking music seriously they bought her nice instruments and never pushed her to get a job so that she could focus on music. Ironically, by the end of college, while studying computer science, I was paying my bills with music.