OK, so around November last year, I fell off the grid. Stopped posting in the middle of a series. Just walked away. And now, like a bad high school relationship, I’ve popped back up and begged you to start reading my blog again. I swear I had good intentions, and I promise I didn’t cheat on you with that other set of readers; you know, the ones with the short skirts and the car… I digress.
November and December were a career-changing period for me; things happened that were good, but left me extremely busy at work. I chose to spend my free time focusing on family time, and I let other things (like my blog and my contributions to the SQL Server community) slide. Since it’s now a week into January, I thought I would start anew, and try to kick off the year on a good foot. Instead of making specific resolutions (which I’ll probably break), let me pick a direction and head that way.
First, I want to continue to focus on my family. Last year was an amazing year for me; I got married during the summer, and I had to relearn some things about a healthy family structure. The first rule is that it takes more than just time; it takes an effort to communicate about things, including those things that are not always easy to say. If you’ve followed my blog at all, you know that this is my second marriage; my first marriage ended in part because I stopped participating. Hopefully, I’ve learned from that.
However, I didn’t just bring me into this new union of souls; I have two teenage daughters that I’ve brought along with me. They need time to get to know their new extended family as well (they now have 10 grandparents, and uncles, aunts, and cousins), and I need to make sure that I keep investing my time in them as well as my wife. I love these three women very much, and I need to do everything I can to make sure that they know that. I guess I’m just stating that to lay out the framework for the principles that are following.
Second, I need to focus on my new career. I got promoted to a management position in mid-November. I’ve worked for this company for 9 years, and although I’ve been the senior member of the development team for most of that time, this is my first management position ever; I’m now the manager of a newly-formed team of Database Administrators, which means it’s a strange new world for me. I’ve got to learn to do things a little differently; my goal is not to solve problems, but rather to empower others to solve problems.
Third, I want to be more diligent about my contributions to the community. This means that I need to lay out specific time for blogging, and other community activities (I’m the treasurer for AtlantaMDF, as well as the organizer for the Eleventy-First SQL Saturday). I also need to be more focused in my activities; I’ve spent a lot of time recently on StackOverflow, and I probably need to be less obsessive about that; I need scheduled activities, not hit-or-miss.
So there you have it; my simple return to blogging and my New Year’s “resolutions” all wrapped up in a simple package. I’m still going to have to find time to finish the last series I started, but I’m hoping to find some time in the next few days. Take me back, just one more time. Please?
