I decided in January that I would write regularly about people that I’m grateful for. Now it’s April. Oops.

The concepts are simple and science based. Positive emotions help your clarity of thought. Further, your moods and actions extend out through your network to the third layer. With that in mind, I want to think more clearly and the most direct path to positive thoughts and emotions being gratitude, I’m attempting to focus and publicize my gratitude by publicly sharing it through these blogs (in short, I’m trying to tune my brain like I would tune a query).

I am grateful for Tim Ford (b|t).

Tim is a great guy. Further, Tim can be patient with thick headed dorks (raising my hand). For example, among all the other stuff Tim does (Board of Directors for PASS, Editor at SQL Mag, Track organizer at Connections), he organizes and runs SQL Cruise. Yeah, yeah, cue the laugh track. You don’t get it. SQL Cruise changes peoples lives. I’ve seen it. Now, first time I went, I had a blast, but, I’m a bit thick, so I didn’t understand everything I was seeing. What I knew was that I didn’t tweet or write a blog post for a week, therefor I must not be doing my job. So, I asked Red Gate to not send me on any more cruises. We skipped them for a while. Last year, with a lot of prodding from Kevin Kline (another person I’m grateful for, but one blog post at a time), I went on the cruise again. Yeah, sun, rum, beaches… Oh, and people doing intense networking, redirecting their careers, going through intense, long form sessions with great speakers (and me)… Whoa! I spent some time talking with Tim and his wife Amy and the light finally dawned. Tim isn’t ONLY finding a way to get a bunch of us out on a boat so we can have fun (yeah, that’s part of it), he’s literally building and engineering opportunities for people to recharge and reset in preparation for radically modifying their career (not their jobs, people after SQL Cruise have careers). And it’s done the same thing for me. I’ve been personally reinvigorated by the work that Tim has done and I’m immensely grateful for that. But it’s not just SQL Cruise. Tim has helped me personally and professionally because he’s just that sort of person. He’s one of a long list of people that I’m regularly gobsmacked are willing to hang out with me.

Thank you Tim.

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