Everyone has goals or at least they should have goals. As a young professional out of college, I had plenty of goals, but none of them involved SQL Server. I really had no idea of where I wanted my career to go other than working in IT. Finally in 2000, I stumbled upon an opportunity that started me down the career path of a DBA. It didn't take long to realize I enjoy this type of work. Over the next decade, I learned a lot from my coworkers, training classes, and especially my mistakes. Yes, I really did drop the master database by mistake.

But one thing I didn't take advantage of was PASS and its huge community of SQL professionals. I knew about some of events, but it wasn't until 2012 that I got heavily involved. That decision forever changed my career. Since then, I started a blog about SQL Server, attended PASS Summit 2013, attended SQL Cruise 2014, started speaking at SQL user groups and SQL Saturdays, started working at Microsoft, attended SQL Cruise 2015, and most of all met a huge group of people that enjoy working with SQL Server as much as I do.

Eventually, I set a goal to be a speaker at PASS Summit. Well this past week I received notification that I had been chosen as a speaker for PASS Summit 2016. Upon hearing the news, I was extremely excited and humbled, especially considering there are far better speakers with more entertaining topics out there.

There are a lot of people that helped me along the way, but I'd like to really say thank you to my friend Andrew Kelly (b|t). Ever since I met him on board SQL Cruise, he has helped improve in the areas of public speaking, designing presentations, writing abstracts, code-review, and just an all-around great mentor.

However, this good news could not have come a worse time. 2016 has been a rough year for my family's health and it got substantially worse in early September when my wife was diagnosed with cancer. Luckily, doctors caught it very early and her prognosis is good, but we're still not taking any chances.

My good friend Scott, who is a cancer-survivor, told me "cancer is a radical disease and must be treated in radical ways" and to be prepared for any type of news throughout the treatment. I'm confident my wife can beat this and make a quick recovery, but until then I'll have to postpone speaking at PASS Summit. While I enjoy spending time with all of my friends within the SQL community, I love my wife and must focus all of my time to her recovery. There will always be time for another Summit.