Tag: coping

I 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. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to get outside and pick up litter or do something kind for the planet.

I do try to pay attention when I’m walking around, and I pick up litter I see. It’s a bit of a habit when I’m in a volleyball gym as well. I do make sure my kids clean up, but others kids and parents aren’t always paying attention, so I usually end up grabbing a few things from chairs and floors.

I haven’t done this much on my property, so I took a walk around the perimeter recently, looking for trash that had blown away or torn up by dogs. I took a plastic bag with me and picked up some trash.

I 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. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to let someone in your life know how much you appreciate their presence.

Easy to do to for family, and something I’d recommend you do often. It’s nice to hear that your loved ones appreciate you, and I try to remember to let them know.

I don’t do enough of this with friends, but I reached out to a friend that I have lunch with periodically and let him know that I enjoy his company, whether we get together or not. I’m making it a point to try and get together more often with him this year. We used to have lunch almost every month, and I need to get back to that.

I 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. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to plan an act of kindness towards another.

Obviously I don’t want to disclose this before I do it, but this was a good one. I had to think a bit here and decide what I should do for someone else.

It did a small thing, but an item I think matters. My daughter was coming home from college. I usually keep her plant alive while she’s gone and it’s been a habit of mine to clean her sheets and remake her bed before she returns.

This time I added something else. She’s gluten sensitive, which isn’t a big deal for me to cook, but I’ve gotten out of the habit of having stuff around she can eat. It’s been nearly 5 months since I’ve worried about gluten.

I swung by the store after the gym the day she returned. I didn’t really need anything, but I grabbed some gluten free bagels and dropped them in the fridge. When she got come from the airport, she noticed and was thrilled. Gave her something for breakfast the next morning.

A small thing, but a bit of joy that was easy to create by thinking of someone.

I 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. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to set a career goal to focus on this year.

I have to admit this one is hard. I’m in my 50s, near the end of my career. I honestly hope this is the last job that I have where I need to work. I hope I find things to keep my busy in retirement, which might be paid jobs, but I’m hoping this is my last full time, need a paycheck job.

I do usually set some goals to help me keep working on myself, but seeing this as a “career goal” makes me think I ought to be more ambitious.

I don’t worry or aim for too many technical skills, but I would like to get better at helping my employer do well. As a result, I’m going to set a goal this year to brush up on Oracle and learn about PostgreSQL. In doing this, I want some way to measure this, so here it is:

• Set up a git repo with folders to SQL Server, Oracle, and PostgreSQL.
• Create 3 pipelines that will CI changes for each platform.
• Have a release pipeline to each platform, likely hitting a container somewhere for each platform.
• Ensure that I can demo this and that I know enough Pl/SQL and pgsql that when I write T-SQL, I can duplicate it in the other languages.

Not really a high bar, but something to work on this year.