I haven’t written much in a while, having had to put more time into both personal and professional obligations over the past year. I still don’t have a lot of time/energy for it, but I miss the effort – calming, cathartic, useful. I still want to do more long form writing, but maybe that is a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. A friend remarked to me at the PASS Summit that it was good to hear Steve and I talking about PASS and SQLSaturday. In truth Steve far more than me lately (good to see), but coming back from the Summit I had a lot of notes and hate to not share them. I can write them quickly and perhaps start a conversation, or wait for time to write them well and maybe never get them published. So as always you may see some typos, bad sentences, incomplete thoughts and even a rant or two.

I’ve also been affected by the presidential race this year. I’m tired of snark, tired of not talking about facts, of focusing only on the negative, of not having discussions about how to fix things. In politics, career, PASS, life, we have and will always have disagreements. Whether the conversation is useful and productive depends on two things; patience and respect. I’ll readily admit my views are one of many, if you’ll hear mine I’ll hear yours (mind you, lets NOT discuss politics here!) and maybe we can each learn something. One of my unpolished guiding principles is that I want to win more than I want to be right. I have no interest in tearing things down for the sake of it, if anything I’m the opposite, it’s good for my soul to make something incrementally better. Doing that in 200 word posts is hard though. I like to write about things that can be made better, or that intrigue me, or that have taught me something. I don’t know yet if that will change how I write. I hope it does, though I recognize the best writing isn’t done in 15 minutes – its longer to write, needs time to rest, then be revisited, time I don’t often have, back to perfect vs good, for done vs not done even.

So I’ll write more this month, then pause to consider – am I writing something worth publishing, sharing, or should I just journal privately?