Words: 832
Time to read: ~ 4 minutes
Introduction
Welcome to another T-SQL Tuesday, the monthly blogging party originally started by Adam Machanic ( blog | twitter ).
This month we have Jason Brimhall ( blog | twitter ) who has asked us what I, and I’m sure others, and even Jason himself, consider to be a very difficult topic.
[…] here comes the difficult task. You have been the benefactor of some awesome help from somebody else. You even wrote about it and in a way, told that person how they impacted you, your career, or both. You have set goals for yourself to become a better you after some personal reflection, meditation, introspection. Then you have given back to the community in some way.
I am not asking you to be braggy, just aware and cognizant. What have you done to impact somebody else in the last 13 months?
How do you know you have impacted them? This is really the hard question. I want stories of how you impacted somebody else for the better. This may mean you will need to talk to some people and have a little retrospective with them.
Jason Brimhall
Introspection
Oh, the writer’s block…
I’m not the best for introspection. The furthest I think I’ve gone with introspection is L’Esprit de l’Escalier. Even then the best that I’ve come up with is, when being told that databases can’t even handle going RBAR, eventually thinking of the line “I’ll RBAR you!”… yeah…no…not great.
As for impacting people, this is a tough one as I don’t think I’ve woken up and gone “you know what, today I’m going to get up and impact people!”… apart from having the urge to “RBAR impact” insulting developers of course.
The vast majority of the time I have just blogged, tweeted, and talked about random tidbits and informational treats that I have come across, not solely because I want people to know and use what I’ve found, but because I’ve found these information nuggets so interesting that I think that they need to be spread.
Knowledge is power as they say, and it’s nice to be empowered.
Where the Contributions are…
While it has been only recently that I’ve started going to various conferences, SQL Saturdays, and Summit and even though it has been on my list of things to do this year, it’ll be this January before I’ve planned to do my first presentation. So there hasn’t been a lot of personal meetings that I can be sure that I’ve impacted people with.
However, there has been a couple of things I’ve been slightly good at: blogging and tweeting. It’s coming up to my 3rd year as a blogger and it’s been through this medium that I’ve been able to see an impact on some of my outside work activites.
I’ve had some great surprises from people in the community about stuff they’ve seen on here. And while I’ve chosen not to name names, the set of people is small so it’s not a great stretch to figure out who they are.
Regardless I want to thank them, one and all, for any time that they’ve contacted and thanked me for information or assistance. I truly believe that the simple act of reaching out and extending an appreciation, however small, has a profound and lasting impression.
Plus it’s nice to know that when you’re shouting into the void, that the void sometimes shouts back.
When the Void shouts back
From helping out a community member with importing Excel to SQL Server ( FYI: as of the time of writing, they have become a first time speaker! ), to doing a basic formatting on a community members PowerShell script ( extremely impressive for a first time PowerShell user) leading to a promise of more helping out (which I fully intend to..eventually :/ ), to promoting the blog posts of a few, deserving people whos work deserved wider reach ( their posts being more informative and better literary works than I’ve achieved in my 3 years), and helping new data professionals on their journey into the data platform world with DBA Fundamentals group ( although the work of the whole group behind the scene has put mine to shame!).
It’s not all selfless though
There are times when I realise I haven’t even scratched the surface of what the data platform has to offer. While I know that the days have long gone where anyone can be considered to know everything but each token of appreciation, each expression of gratitude is a replenishment to my morale.
Just a way to say that all efforts put in, while not showing straight away, build up. I think this quotes states it better than I ever could.
“You don’t try to build a wall. You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say ‘I’m gonna lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid,’ and you do that every single day, and soon you have a wall.”
Will Smith
To all the people that have thanked me, thank you for helping me see that my bricks are slowly becoming a wall.