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A lot has been happening this year. I decided to throw my hat in the ring at
being a blogger and a presenter on SQL topics a little over a year ago. What started out as a nudge into getting out
into the community resulted in a full fledged dive into the deep end. This has been a year that professionally, I
don't know that I could ever duplicate.
Before this year I'd never been to a PASS Summit. I'd never spoken at a conference, never been
invited to submit to a conference, heck I'd never attended a SQL Server User
Group (and I had to look up the acronym SSUG).
And it all gets back to one word.
"So Balls",
you say, "What word is that?"
The word Dear Reader is Opportunity. This is a word that has been weighing very
heavily on me lately. You see this word,
like all words, can be taken many different ways.
THE EASY
OPPORTUNITY
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These are the kind of opportunities that just fall into your
lap, and are a windfall. You fly into
Chicago and one of your buddies just happens to have an extra Cub's ticket for
the game that night. You check into your
coach flight and get automatically upgraded to first class. Your walking by a ride at Disney and someone
who is leaving says "Hey would you and your kid's like our fast
passes".
There is no downside to this opportunity. No one is put out, the timing is perfect, and
everything just fits into place.
When we lived in Virginia we took our first family vacation
every and we drove down to Orlando Fl to go to Disney world. Since we had the boys my wife and I had been
dreaming with stars in our eyes about the day we would take our kids to Disney. It was her hard work, late nights at her job
being a manager for a restaurant, and a 401k loan, but we made it down
there.
While we were down there we had a day where the boys crashed
early, and the park was going to be open till 4 am. So when everybody woke up we had a late
dinner and headed to the Magic Kingdom around 11 pm. While we were standing in line for the Tea
Cups a Disney Cast Member came over and offered us a "Magic" experience. They filled out a card for us commemorating where
we were and it was made out to the kids with the date on it, and gave us a pass
to go to the front of the line. The
line was short, so we didn't make anyone "miss out" on the ride. But it was a very special experience, and it
helped make a great night just a little bit better.
THE LEARNING
OPPORTUNITY
Okay so you F***ed up.
It happens. It's happened to me
it's happened to you. It happens.
"Balls",
you say, " WHOA! You just went from
Magical Moment at Disney to You F***ed up WHOA WHOA WHOA!"
Ahh Dear Reader, but that is typically the way these things
work out. Ever done a reply all and not
realized the whole company was on it? How about getting auto corrected and
telling instead of telling the company VP's "Sorry for the inconvenience"
that the main server is offline; you send out "Sorry for the incontinence"
(incase you need to look it up it means losing control of one's bowels), yep
told the senior management sorry about making you wet yourself over a server
outage. I was lucky it was a Japanese company, I only heard from the American staff
and they were laughing their @$$es off.
How about locking out a production domain account? How about having your SQL Server page to your
C Drive so the first time you present live in front of people your demo that
should take 30 seconds takes 5 minutes and 40 seconds.
Yep these are all mistakes I've made (many more than that),
and thanks to them I'm wicked paranoid about auto correct, always check to see
who I'm replying to, when a demo goes wrong I've got a backup plan, and Keypass is a wonderful thing.
But that is how things go.
One second the world is going fine.
The next you discover that the chair you were sitting in is broken and
you are lying on your back. Nope I
haven't done that but I did one pretty close to that.
These are the learning opportunities. This is the school of hard knox. Where you learn that you stretch to keep from
pulling a muscle, that you hydrate so you can avoid a cramp, and that you will
make darn sure not to repeat. Because
you did it once, you got the T-Shirt, and you don't want to ride that ride
again.
THE HARD WORK
OPPORTUNITY
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We know these as well.
This is the opportunity that nobody handed to you. That you earned with blood, sweat, and not a
little determination. A couple jobs ago
in a land far far away, Virginia, I was working at a job. I enjoyed it I was working hard, and I really
liked the people I was working for and with.
I was busting my hump trying to make myself one of the Key people, one
of the linchpins, and I felt I was deserving of a promotion and a raise.
In one year's time I had gotten some certifications, worked
on many different efforts, volunteered for more, and had taken the time to
mentor some of the Jr guys on the team.
I was working on Programming stuff, Database stuff, Server Engineer
Stuff, Training Stuff, needless to say I was doing a lot of stuff.
The time came for my review and it was the typical company
review. There were some sections that
didn't pertain to me or my job, that were normally rated middle of the road so
as not to sink my score but ground it from getting to high. This year I felt in all the extra work that
I'd done I'd found some ways to actually
rate pretty high on that stuff, and I needed to because I wasn't yet a Sr guy
and I wanted to be one.
The review process consisted of us writing our initial
review. Our managers reviewing and
adjusting it, and then meeting with us to come to a consensus on a final review
that would get accepted and sent off to HR.
I wrote the heck out of my review.
It was stacked full of arguments of why I should be a Sr guy and why I
deserved a big raise, and I was ready to go into my review and argue it out and
come out on top.
Funny thing happened on the way to the forum, my managers
agreed with me. I was working for a
company that really valued me and what I was doing. I grinned ear to ear, and jumped up and
clicked my heels when no one was looking.
But hard work had gotten me there, and I just needed to ask for the Opportunity
to be recognized.
THE MISSED
OPPORTUNITY
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Simply put these are the things that you miss. Either by accident or on purpose. This could be missing meeting up with friends
because your phone died. Passing on
presenting at an event so you can attend a family gathering. These are the things that we miss out on in
this game of life. Forget to follow up
with a business contact, go back three spaces.
You only go around on this rock once. Whatever awaits us after this, you only get
once chance. The missed opportunities
could be passing on a job opportunity.
Or they could be the time you spend away from your family while you
attend a conference.
When the baby has a nightmare, or there is thunder outside
she clings to me. 99.99% of the time she
wants Mom. But when she is scared she
wants Dad. It's a little thing I
know. But it makes me happy to be there
for her. I'm not a jerk I'm not happy
that she is scared, but knowing that this little person loves and trusts me so
much that just by being beside her she believes I can make thunder and
lightning go away is earth shatteringly awesome. Being a Dad means that you are more powerful
that lightning, able to scare away a monster in a closet just by being awake,
and able to bring comfort just by being there.
My kids will not be little forever and the baby won't be a baby much
longer.
Some missed opportunities are going to a movie. Some are much bigger than that.
Sometimes we work late, sometimes we have conference calls
during dinner, sometimes we have trouble calls that keep us away nights and
weekends, training that makes us travel.
It is part of the job we take on as IT professionals. We need to do work when it will not affect
other people. Sometimes that means you
are working Saturday morning 12 am to 4 am, sometimes it's Saturday morning 7
am to 12 noon. Other days its Thursday
from 10 pm to 4 am Friday. It happens to
me, it happens to you, it happens to all of us
The most important thing about missed opportunities is that
it gives us a chance to have a better understanding of what is important. Because when we realize that these things are
important we can do a better job of minimizing what we miss.
WHAT OPPORTUNITY
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR
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Your Mission should you choose to accept it Dear Reader, is
to figure out what the Opportunity you are looking for is. It could be one born out of Hard Work. It could be that as the day goes along you
will have a Learning Opportunity, hopefully it will just be an Easy
Opportunity. And if it is a Missed
Opportunity then I hope you learn a little about what was most important, and I
hope you made the right choice.
Whatever it is, whether you know it or not you are looking
for an opportunity right now. So Good
luck and I'll see you next time.
Thanks,
Brad
