I’ve started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.
Today’s tip is to recall three things you’ve done that you are really proud of.
The Snowboarding Investment
I started snowboarding before I had kids. I got pretty good, and I’ve enjoyed going fast, avoiding breaks, and making the most of the time I have on the slopes. As my kids grew up, we started all of them on skis, and in ski school. Expensive, but it allowed them to learn from someone that wasn’t a parent and it allowed my and my wife to continue to enjoy ourselves. As they learned, we enjoyed them learning to keep up with us.
For my younger two, they wanted to start snowboarding relatively quickly after learning to keep up with us adults on skis. Rather than do more ski school, I took the time to work each each of them. My son was older, 11 or 12, when he wanted to switch, but taking days to teach him meant I was really on the beginner slopes with him, not having a fun day.
It took the 4-5 days at the end of one season and 2-3 at the beginning of the next to get him to the point where we could progress to a continuous run down Keystone or Copper mountain.
My daughter started younger, which was harder. She was barely on skis when she say her brother snowboarding and wanted to try.
This was many more days, often family days where I would spend half the day walking alongside her, or holding her balanced and helping her learn how to move down the slopes.
I had to put aside fun times to invest in them. It’s paid dividends over the years, and I’ve had great times with them on the slopes. I’m really proud of spending the time to teach them and then watching them grow and learn to love sliding down the mountain.
Ranch Improvements
We moved to a horse ranch about 15 years ago, and my wife started full time teaching about 10 years ago. As she’s tried to experiment with her skills as a horse whisperer, she’s asked me to help build things to help her better care for horses.
She gave me the challenge of building slow feeders years ago, and I spent some trying different designs and building her feeders that work well for her purposes. Here is one of the early designs. Hint, plywood doesn’t work well over time.
Some have now been in service over a decade, and I’ve built quite a few more. We have 13 in use and 2 spares now. Recently, she also got the idea that she wanted a horse back scratcher, so I figured out how to do this.
SQLServerCentral
It wasn’t my idea. Credit goes to Brian Knight for the idea and helping bring the founders together. Over the years, a lot of the site has grown and evolved because of me. I was the founder that was able to work for the company full time, I started the editorials, and I’ve been the face of the site for many years.
I remember crossing 1 million posts, 1 million subscribers, publishing books and a magazine, hosting parties at the PASS Summit, and getting the chance to meet many of you in person over the years have been highlights.
Hearing many of you tell me that the site has helped you in your career, has solved a problem, or inspired you in some way are immensely gratifying to me. I can’t tell you how much I’ve appreciated the kind words and comments from many people over the years.
I’m grateful to Redgate for allowing me to continue to steward the site as the Editor in Chief, and this has been one of the things I’m most proud of in my career.