Voice of the DBA

Tag: vacation

  • Quiet Time

    It’s vacation week for me. Everything’s scheduled for SQLServerCentral, and my family is taking our annual ski break for Thanksgiving. We left on Sunday, after I returned from SQL Saturday #59 and are not due back in town until Fri or Sat. I’m not even sure how “wired” we’ll be, though I will be tweeting/FB’ing a bit from the slopes.

    We typically have gone skiing on Thursday to Sunday, but this year we managed to book a whole week in Winter Park, CO. So we took advantage of it, and I’m leaving work behind.

    It’s a good break, and while I’m worried about coming back to tons of articles to edit, I need to break. The last few months have been slightly crazy, and we have lots of stuff in the pipeline for next year, so I need to step back, relax, and then spend December looking to find ways to manage the work life balance.
    Hopefully everyone has a great holiday, and if you don’t get a response from my this week, you’ll know why.

  • Back Home

    And glad to be there. I was gone almost 7 days, home only for 24:15:00 before back out on another trip. Between SQL Connections, and a little setup for the PASS Summit, I was beat.

    And behind. I had scheduled out newsletters and editorials, but I came back to over 20 articles submitted in the last week along with a dearth of editorials and blog posts. I had hoped to write some while I was gone, but the days get so long and busy that I really didn’t. An attempt on the planes didn’t really work either, and I was actually too burned out from the travel to even get coherent thoughts out.

    I’ll be back with more tomorrow, talking about my impressions of Connections, and a few notes from the pre-PASS Summit as well.

  • Taking Time Off

    I’m trying to better manage my workload. When I owned this site, I struggled to find time off, and typically worked all the time, even on vacations!

    The last couple years I’ve slowly started to pull away a bit and find a better balance. Allowing some guest editors to run the site for a day, trusting others to get some work done, has helped me to keep things in a better perspective.

    So today marks the start of another short break for me. My wife and I are trying to get away alone once a year, and are heading to Vegas for a few days next week after the July 4 Holiday. It’s new for us, and with kids (9 and 11), we’ve been nervous about leaving them, but it worked out earlier this year, so we’re trying it again.

    I do try to find balance in my life, and it’s something I write about. You need to understand the job is the job, and while it can be rewarding and fulfilling, don’t live to work. Work to live.