Saint Louis Odyssey

I love my job.

Yesterday morning I was up at 3:15AM, even though the alarm clock was set to 4AM. I never fell back asleep, always worried that I would miss the alarm when it did go off. So I got out of bed at 3:45, showered, shaved, and made it to the airport by about 4:40 AM. Now, I’ve done day trips before, usually to NYC by driving to New Haven and taking a train, but yesterday was different. Yesterday I was going to take a day trip to St. Louis to present to the local SQL Server user group there.

I made it to my gate with my McCoffee in hand (black, of course) when my phone rang. It was Mark Souza. Mark was on his way to Seattle and was on the 6AM flight to Chicago to make a connection there. I went back to sit down and chat with Mark and offered to buy him a cup of coffee to make up for all the wine he bought me at the MVP Summit (he declined, but I *did* offer!)

After chatting with Mark for about 15 minutes (in case you didn’t know, Mark and I both serve on the PASS Board of Directors) I went back to my gate where we were already boarding. My first class upgrade had come through so I took my seat at the front of the plane and with that, my day was off and running at 5:40AM (and I had been up for two hours). I put my headphones on and listened to my iPod Nano for the first leg of my journey and that’s when it hit me:

I haven’t done a blog post tying events to music lyrics in far too long.

So, that’s what you get today. Lyrics from my playlist of ‘Working Tunes’ that were playing while I was on my way to STL. (By the way, a huge thumbs up to Delta for shuttling me around the country today without any issues. All four flights were flawless, and on the day I needed it most. It probably wasn’t too smart for me to try to do it all in one day.)

Enjoy!

“I’ve been waiting for a long time, for this moment to come, I’m destined, for anything…at all”

I had planned for this day months in advance, I think last October is when we agreed on the timing of everything. I have no idea when my schedule got to the point that I needed to be booked months in advance, but that is the reality for me these days. I have a glass dry erase board in my office that lists my upcoming schedule and every day I would see “3/8 St. Louis SSUG” up there and think about the long day I had coming.

“Guess what I am the same man, same that I’ve always been…”

This line struck me because in many ways I feel that I have found my calling. I get to travel a bit, I get to meet new people, I get to speak to a group, I get to help people individually, I get to blog, etc. I get many different creative outlets with my current role. As a production DBA I was not able to have these luxuries, and I think it led to me being a little frustrated at times. Thankfully I was able to put myself in a position to have someone give me a chance to do what (I believe) I was born to do.

“Nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if you try”

It’s true, I hit the job lotto. I have a dream job, no question. It is nice work, and you *can* get it if you want it. Well, not mine, that one is already taken thankyouverymuch. But if you feel that your current position and role is no longer satisfying then you need to take steps to find something else. Life is too short to be miserable at work. First thing you want to do is ask yourself “what makes my day a happy one at work”. Start listing the things that give you the most satisfaction. Then, start doing more of those things. As you gain experience, increase your network, and eventually you will find new opportunities. And more often than not those opportunities end up as a new job or career. It is possible, trust me.

“But I’m flying to Istanbul, oh so why don’t you meet me…”

This line is for all of the people I would meet along the way yesterday. I started with Mark Souza, met an interesting chap in the Sky Club lounge at CVG, was picked up at the St. Louis airport by Kathi Kellenberger (blog | @auntkathi), driven to the meeting where I met up with my coworker Jeff, and after my talk was done I got to hang out with a handful of DBA-type folks and just chat. I was also able to see Julie Bloomquist and Kim Tessereau again. In other words, it was a good day to get out of my home office and connect with a lot of people I had not seen in a few days, weeks, or months.

“Supermassive black hole…”

Yesterday it hit me that I am a gravity well. OK, maybe not an exact definition of one, but more along the lines of what Malcolm Gladwell wrote about. Part of the idea of ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ is that there are a handful of folks that are connected to many others. So, when you start figuring out how people are connected to Kevin Bacon you will also see a handful of names that appear frequently. I am starting to get that feeling myself these days. It usually is a result of me talking to two people and just assuming they already know each other because I happen to know both of them. Weird, but true, and it is happening more and more to me.

And I love helping people get connected. When people reach out to me and need an answer, or a favor, I enjoy being able to point them in the right direction.

“Accroches-toi à ton rêve”

I recently bought an audiobook from iTunes. It is from Michel Thomas, a former language instructor who was known for being able to help people start speaking foreign languages quickly. I did this because I also was recently contacted by some readers of my book who reminded me that I want to live and work in France one day. They encouraged me to get the books so that I could start learning a little bit at a time now. When I take a trip I listen to the books for at least 30 minutes in an effort to get better at conversational French. (I have a long way to go).

“Crack a smile and cut your mouth and drown in alcohol…”

Waiting in the Sky Club at DTW for the last leg home, enjoying a glass of wine, getting caught up on emails and stuff, listening to some music…and I cut the roof of my mouth on a pretzel rod. Seriously. While this song was playing. It’s like it was begging to be included here.

“Oh you know I did it, it’s over and I feel fine…”

Had this song playing on the last leg home, and I think that line sums it up rather well. Made it home just before midnight, over 20 hours after it all started.

And I didn’t just feel fine…I felt great.

I love my job.

 

4 thoughts on “Saint Louis Odyssey”

  1. Great post–I hadn’t listened to that FF song in forever and now it’s blasting away. I hope you slept in today! Also, I used Michel Thomas’ Italian series as a brush-up before I went to Italy last year, and it worked really well. Er, well enough to order pizza e birra anyway!

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