I stopped blogging late last year. I’ll be honest, I was tired. I had decided to take a month or two off, and that grew into 2 or 3 months, 4 or 5, and in the end I think I was out ~7 months. To be fair I haven’t been blogging as regularly as I used to for a while. As I’m sure you know I was pretty sick back in mid 2020. Not Covid. I haven’t in fact managed to catch that yet. Regardless I’d been struggling for a little bit to keep up my schedule even before that and now I had to focus on my health for a while. I’d considered it something like Riding the tiger. I got on, I’m riding, but if I get thrown off I’m not getting back on. Once I got back to a reasonable health level I started up again here and there and managed a reasonable number of posts each year. Not super consistent but ~60-70% of what I consider my normal schedule. Well, for several reasons I’ve decided to get back on that tiger.

I’m still an MVP! I honestly was a bit shocked when I got the renewal early this month. I really didn’t feel like I’d done enough to still be in that category and I have to say I was thrilled. I truly can’t tell you what it means to me. Quick point here. Being a Microsoft MVP does not mean you are an expert in your field. I mean you probably are, but that’s not what it means. So what does it mean? Well, from their website

The MVP Award is a global program of recognized technology experts and community leaders who actively support technical communities through unique, innovative, and consistent knowledge sharing. These community leaders actively contribute to support the developer and IT Pro communities worldwide, helping them learn, build, and use our products. Learn below what the Microsoft MVP Program seeks for recognition of future community leaders.

Ok. I guess they do have the word Expert in there. But to me, it’s really all about the sharing of information and being part of a community. Getting renewed was a jolt for me and was part of what made me decide to start blogging again. It’s a moderately small part though because while it’s an awesome acknowledgment it’s never been one of my core reasons for blogging in the first place.

Mostly I’d just been wanting to do it. Every evening/weekend I’d think I should really work on a blog post. I’ve always enjoyed blogging and it’s become an important part of what I think of myself. I’d gotten way out of the habit though. And while it didn’t really take a lot to get me started again I’m still going to have an uphill battle getting that habit back again.

My health, while certainly not where I’d like it, is reasonably stable. I’m working on losing some weight and I’m planning 🤣 on working on getting into better shape.

Conferences have always been a big help for me as well. That opportunity to be around people who are also part of our SQL community gets me into a productive mindset. The occasional conference is generally good enough. I’m a big introvert. My office is a cave and I leave only when I have to, and I like it that way. Multiple years (due to Covid and some family sicknesses) was a bit much though. All of that said, we had an in-person meeting at work recently. For all there were bits I chose not to participate in it was an amazing opportunity to visit with my co-workers and friends. And in some ways, it was almost like a SQL Conference since my entire upline are members of the SQL community and we even had Erik Darling (blog|twitter) as a guest participant.

I’ve been employed at my new job for ~9 months now! It’s a great place to work and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve had a couple of people ask if my job has been keeping me too busy to blog but honestly the timing was more coincidental than anything else. In fact, we also moved last year. Now that I think about it the changes in lifestyle probably did have something to do with not blogging for a while.

Long rambling story short, work and home life are as good as I could possibly want and hopefully you’ll be seeing a lot more of me going forward.

P.S. I’ve been building some new models too!