Tag Archives: career

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Don’t want to look back and say “Could’ve been me!”

Greetings friends! This is a feelings post (you have been warned). Tomorrow I start my new job. Those that see me on a regular basis were shocked to hear I had accepted a new position. It was kind of a shock to me too. I have loved my time with my now previous employer. I was happy, challenged and most importantly appreciated. But then I got a call, an opportunity to work for one of the companies on my list of “Dream Places to Work”. I talked to my boss, he is a coach at heart and told me that I had to at least meet the team and know what I would be turning down or accepting so that I wouldn’t look back and wonder what might have been. I will forever be grateful for the lessons he taught me and the encouragement that he so kindly provided daily.
I did what he said, I met the team, toured the facility, asked questions and finally accepted the offer. It was such a hard choice to leave, if I could work at two places at once, I would have done that. I have been asked a bunch what made me choose to take the offer, so here goes:
1. Opportunity to work with advanced systems, HA and DR that is mature and the chance to learn from it. I won’t lie, I am nervous about learning new stuff, but I also love it, so I am sure it will be good.
2. Opportunity to learn the advanced features of SQL Server that only Enterprise level systems can provide.
3. An awesome team. I have become a bit of a feral DBA, so we will see how this goes. I very much hope that they are understanding of my crazy ideas, weird habits and kind in teaching me how to work with a team again. I also am so excited to learn new things, and be a part of something awesome. I have a lot of information in my brain, but I don’t always trust it, so it is good to have people to bounce ideas off and to gut check my ideas.
4. An awesome boss, his team spoke so highly of him, I knew I would be in good hands. This was also key. I had such an amazing boss already, there is a lot for him to live up to, but seeing the way the team admired and listened to him, plus tease him, helped me see that this could work for me.
5. A chance to learn ASL and make a difference. I have always wanted to learn American Sign Language, now I have a chance. I am super nervous about signing the wrong thing or offending someone (classic Andrea) but I know the only way to learn and get better is to try. Also, I get a sign name, which was kind of the seal on the deal. I am excited to learn what it is tomorrow. Helping people is something that has always been important to me. I make the joke that I am like Mary Poppins in that I only stay as long as I am needed. But making a difference is something that I need. I need to know that I am helping people live better lives, and this is definitely something that helps people.
My princess dresses are also a way to help people. I volunteer work for children’s charities and my personality is a big part of that work. I recently had a discussion with someone about not being just a character. He asked if I should stop wearing the princess dresses because it hides who I am and makes me a character instead of a person. I thought about this question a lot for a few days. I even talked to people about it and asked if they thought that I was more of a joke doing it. But it always came back to me and what I wanted. I feel that me dressing as a princess shows how I feel on the inside but am too shy to show. It is me trying to bring joy to other people. It is a reminder that we all have something special that we can share with the world to make the world better. We can help build up each other and also make the difference in the life of a child. I give a lot of reasons why I do what I do, but at the end of the day, it is because it builds me up so I can keep building other people up. I hope you have felt that love and support and if not, send me a tweet so I can tell you what I see in you.
I spent a lot of time trying to decide what to do. I think a specific song by The Struts made me feel that I had to do it:

I wanna taste love and pain
I wanna feel pride and shame
I don’t wanna take my time
I don’t wanna waste one line
I wanna live better days
Never look back and say
It could have been me
It could have been me

So, tomorrow, it’s me and I am hoping for the best.

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I can’t live without you, I can’t live without you SQL

By now you know I love Microsoft SQL Server. I get a lot of questions about how I got into database and why I got into database. One of the new people I am working with suggested I add the story to my blog. So here goes…

Life should be fun and money is a big part of life. I wanted to be able to work hard so I could play hard, but I also wanted to love what I did. I use the phrase all the time “When it stops being fun, it is time to be done.” Basically, when I don’t love what I do, I am miserable.

My first real job was as an Administrative assistant. I was terrible at it. I didn’t type well, hated writing memos, and dictation was a nightmare for me. The only think I really loved was when I got to do some mail merges (it was tables, I just didn’t know it yet) and changing the copier toner. You should have seen the day I opened the toner wrong and it went all over the mail room. It was such a mess. I would come home crying everyday because I knew I wasn’t good at it. I didn’t have fun with it. I finally decided that if I couldn’t love my job, I would get a dumb job to so I could go play more and call in sick when I needed a break.

I went to work at a call center selling long distance. I was good at it, and it was fun, but still not perfect. The fun part was the computer program we got to use. I learned it super fast and would help the IT guys test new upgrades. They were super nice to me, and one day suggested that I help train new people on the software we had been testing for roll out. After the training, working on the phone was so boring! The IT guys suggested I come work with them as a Business Analyst. I had no idea what that was or what they did, but it was a new adventure so I went for it. They had me learn Access and when I started pointing Access as the production database (because no one had heard of a snapshot reporting databases back then) it would slow the databases down. The awesome IT guys asked me to learn T-SQL. They gave me new tools and showed me a few things, pointed me to a few websites and it was like I had found the best chocolate ever! I continued to learn working as an Operations Admin and really loved learning SQL Server. I even started to dream in T-SQL. You can imagine my disappointment when I would wake up and my house hadn’t been cleaned by a T-SQL Query. Truncate Table dbo.Dust anyone?

Life changes and so did my opportunities, I worked as an Information Manager, Reporting Manager, and finally I got a gig as a DBA. It was one of the happiest days of my life. I felt like I had finally arrived. Little did I know that just having the title, wouldn’t give me all the answers. There have been a lot of moments of joy and may times my sweet husband has found me crying in my closet because I felt like I wasn’t good enough. I can be loved by 99 out of 100 people in a room and will see that 1 person that doesn’t like me or thinks I am not good enough. I will focus on them and try to change their opinion. When that happens, I go back to what my dear friend Tara said when I was first starting out: “Andrea if they don’t like you, it is because they don’t know you.” I think that is true for so many people.

Today as I watched Brent Ozar, Kendra Little and Doug Lane answer questions about presenting, I realized that many of us don’t feel like we are good enough to teach someone else. We don’t have every perfect answer, but that is part of the fun of SQL Server. There is always more to learn, a different way to do something and someone you can help. There will be people who are mean along the way, but if we focus on our passion and forget the rest we can find joy in the work we do. As Pat Wright says: “When you do what you love, you won’t work a day in your life.” My hope for you is that you find the thing that you love and make it work for you, so you never have to work a day again.

May you feel joy in the work you do today!