Personal

2010 has been an ‘interesting’ year. Interesting in the Chinese curse sense of the word mostly.

I set a bunch of goals back at the end of 2009, but to be quite honest I’m not even going to look at them. If I achieved even one it was more chance than anything. Still there have been a couple of positive aspects to the year.

• Enthusiasm for SQL-related stuff (and pretty much everything else) was finally relocated. I wrote 3 blog posts this last week, and it didn’t feel like a chore for the first time in many months.
• For the first time since I moved to consulting, my income comfortably exceeds my expenses. Moving to consulting at the start of an economic downturn was probably a stupid thing to do, but I never do things the easy way.
• Got the hardest part of my Masters thesis out of the way, all that’s really left is a bit more data collection and writing up.

So, some goals for the new year…

• Finish the thesis. This isn’t optional. I’ve committed to handing it in by June.
• Aikido at least once a week and archery at least one Saturday a month. I’ve skipped far too many classes and practices these last few months.
• Attempt the first MCM test. This probably won’t be until the latter part of the year. The Master’s thesis comes first
• Get back into computer graphics. Old hobby that’s been mostly neglected, but that I still enjoy

No blog-related goals or article quotas. I intend to write a fair bit, but I don’t want to set requirements.

One last thing, for anyone wondering about the computer graphics, these are some work-in-progress or finished pieces.

I suspect for a fair number burnout is something that they believe happens to others. People with less fulfilling jobs, people who don’t love their work, people in poorly managed companies. Other people.

i certainly didn’t consider myself at risk for burnout. I loved my work, I had a great manager prior to moving to consulting and was pretty much my own manager afterwards. I had a hobby (or 5), practiced a sport, took time to play games and relax. At risk? Never!

At least that’s what I thought until sometime around May last year when I realised I had absolutely no enthusiasm for anything related to IT. Blogging was a chore, books held no interest and many a day I opened management studio intending to do some development or investigation and then several hours later I’d close it without a line of code having being written.

The biggest mistake (I think) was in how I handled it. Instead of taking a break (and work was quiet around that time so I could), I took on more commitments, thinking that it would help motivate. Exceptional DBA Awards. SSC Articles. Tech-Ed presentations. PASS Summit presentations. SQL Exams. Hell I even started discussing and planning to write a book.

Bad idea.

Far from acting as motivation, the long list of things to do just made things worse. Far worse. I now had hard deadlines, people chasing me and still no motivation or enthusiasm. Naturally everything came to a head at the worst possible time and place – the PASS summit in Seattle that year. It’s really hard to write and deliver speeches, prep and deliver presentations and generally act friendly and enthusiastic when the only thing that you want to do is get on the next flight and go home. Fortunately I think only a couple of people noticed.

It’s only in the last couple of months (October/November 2010) that the enthusiasm for writing, blogging, researching (and in fact anything other than sitting and watching the world go by) has partially returned. Is the burnout past? No, definitely not, I still have days (weeks) where I can’t summon the enthusiasm to care, but it is getting better.

But this isn’t just a post on history or a poor attempt at sympathy. The point is how I handled it (badly). Looking back, what I should have done was

• Take a break (work was quiet at the time). Not a weekend crashed in front of the TV, but a proper break – out of town for a week or so.
• Get some help from friends, rather than pushing them away and pretending everything was fine.
• Try a new technology rather than piling on SQL stuff. WCF, Ruby, F#, anything as long as it was different.

I’m far from qualified to offer advice on this issue, but I would suggest to anyone feeling the same way, don’t ignore it, don’t try to work through it and don’t hide it. Few problems go away by themselves, burnout certainly doesn’t.

My flat got broken into last night. Cell phone, laptop, camera and wallet all gone.

Yay. Not!

Edit: And my iPod. And an ornamental knife I bought in Scotland a few year back.

Another year gone, another year older. It’s been an interesting year.

Professionally, I’m very happy with the past year. I’ve achieved several goals, got to know some interesting people in the SQL community and, of course, started this blog. I’ve also made some fairly important decisions about the future.

Academically, I’m not so happy. My masters thesis is behind where it should be. (a fact I’m sure my supervisor would agree with.) Most of the initial reading is done and I know what I need to do. I need to sit down and get busy. This is going to have to take a higher priority in the next few months.

On more personal matters, a good friend moved up to JHB. It’s very good to see her again. The roleplaying campaign is going well and from the feedback I’ve been having, the players are all enjoying themselves.

Overall, it’s been a good year. Here’s to the next one.