Why Bother Blogging?
I blog primarily because there’s a Certain Kind of Person that irks me to no end.
The kind of person who:
- Withholds information (you wouldn’t understand anyway)
- Mocks people for not knowing what they know (oh, you silly things)
- Uses the people they mock to validate their necessity (you’d be lost without me)
It’s an ego club that I don’t want to be a part of, and the kind of people who take great glee in being part of this sort of club are unfortunately all too common.
When I learn something, I immediately want everyone else to know it, too. I want it in as many hands as possible.
I don’t even want to charge people for it. That’s only when I have to repeat myself.
The same goes for answering questions at sites like Stack Exchange. I joke about the badge/reputation feedback mechanism a lot, but at the heart of things, I really do hope that every time my Imaginary Life Bucks go up, that it’s because I’ve helped someone out in some way.
The more people who Know A Thing, the better.
That means problems get solved faster, problems get avoided sooner, and hopefully no one has to spend hours or days of their lives banging their head against a problem.
Braining Day
What I’d love for you to take from my writing is that learning about SQL Server is like doing a puzzle that never quite ends.
The pieces I’ve put together are pieces that I picked up from a long list of people who have taken the time to write and teach things over the years — they deserve all the credit, really. My pieces are pretty small in the Grand Scheme of Things, but my aim is to leave the Grand Scheme of Things a little bit more put-together than I found them. A bit less… Fragmented.
Tee-hee.
You know why? I have kids. I don’t want them spending a single second having to think about what a primary key is. One of my grandfathers was a book binder. I’m pretty sure he never clocked out thinking “golly and gosh, I sure do hope my kids someday know the joy of an honest day’s gluing.”
In the same regard, I don’t want you, dear reader, having to glue all this stuff together on your own. The more pieces I put firmly in place, the less time you have to spend sniffing glue and having sticky fingers.
Not that that’s a bad way to spend a weekend.
Y’all Ain’t Not Nothin’
I know that as far as SQL bloggers go, I’m not extraordinary in any way. There are people who are better at writing, teaching, visualizing, and who are a heck of a lot smarter than I am.
Most of them are probably far more sober, too. Perhaps there’s a connection?
Nah. Let’s move on.
I really just want to be consistent. I don’t want to be one of those Vanishing Bloggers. The one who checks in every 6 months with a promise to blog more and a vague update about being really busy with this or that. That is, in the words of a far more consistent writer, a lot of cockadoodie.
We’re all busy. You’re either writing or you’re not.
If I’m writing consistently then I’m learning consistently. If I’m learning consistently then I’m putting more of those pieces we talked about together.
The more often this happens, the better.
The Big Payback
None of this would have been possible without the vision, extreme patience, and hard work of many other people.
My wife, for being very understanding about the amount of time I need to spend staring at glowing rectangles.
Brent, of course, for not firing me.
Kendra and Jeremiah for overlooking my mediocre interviewing skills.
Paul White and Joe Obbish for making fun of me until I get things (mostly) right.
And of course you, dear reader (and sometimes tolerable comment-leaver), for putting up with with my pop culture references that end in 1989.
As always, Thanks for Reading!
26 Comments. Leave new
Erik, your writing style is awesome! I hope you continue doing it, because I very much enjoy reading your thoughts and learning what wisdom you have to impart upon us. I aspire to blog one day, but feel that I would just be regurgitating older knowledge, without adding much in terms of anything new or insightful. Still, I think it may be good to have topics explained in different ways, because we all learn differently. One day I hope to get something started. Until then, I am happy to keep learning from teachers such as yourself.
Hey Chris, you should definitely give blogging a shot! It doesn’t matter at all if someone else has written on the same subject before. Your readers won’t necessarily be their readers for one thing, and for another it’s amazing how much you get out of writing a blog post.
Like the ability to say “Hey, I wrote about that once. Go read this:” https://sqlstudies.com/2016/02/03/blogger-questions-what-if-someone-else-wrote-about-the-same-subject/
Congrats on 300 posts! That is an incredible accomplishment. I disagree strongly with “I’m not extraordinary in any way.” though. Hitting 300 posts shows extraordinary persistence if nothing else. Not to mention the fact that you have an amazing talent for breaking things down and explaining them in a way that is very easy to consume. I frequently will read a post of yours on a subject I’ve written on and think “Wow, I wish I’d said it that way .. or even close to that way.” There will almost always be people are smarter, write it better, write more often etc. But in your case that’s a pretty small list.
Congrats! Hope reaching the wisdom/sobriety of 300 *deleted* posts in the years to come. . .
Congratulations and please keep up the amazing work you are doing!
Congratulations Erik, that’s awesome!
Great work! The way you (and Brent) explain the process or solution makes sense to me (why I keep reading). I happen to enjoy those pop culture references!
Congratulations, Erik.
Thank You for sharing.
I appreciate your hard work, all the info, and you always make me laugh.
Thank You!
I applaud your attitude about knowledge and sharing. In my own small world I try to do the same, but I really can’t imagine having a public soapbox to speak from. More power to you all who do it.
Helpful thoughts there, Erik. I’m sure what you write stands also for the others there at B.O.U. You all are doing great work. Thanks.
You’ve also captured the ethos for many others of us out there, perhaps in tangential areas of IT, trying to help in our own little corners of the world. Again, very nicely put. 🙂
I’m thankful for people like you because you usually document stuff that’s hard to find or it’s not documented. This morning I needed to look up info about truncating logs after a full backup and the bloggers/MVP’s had it and couldn’t find anything official from MS.
Congrats! I know it is very difficult to blog consistently and with quality. I started my blog (www.sqlguatemala.com) last year and with so much quality content and more experienced people, it is hard to stay and not to lose the focus! but posts like this one make me want to continue this never ending journey.
Thanks, that’s all, just thanks. Tonight I will raise a bit of Booker’s, or maybe Del Bac Dorado, in a toast to you and your writing.
Thanks for sharing what you learn. I find it genuinely helpful and useful in my own quest to learn.
Great work for the entire team at Brent Ozar Unlimited, you guys rock!
Thank you!
Well *I* would read three hundred blogs
And *I* would read three hundred more
Just to be the man who laughs his face off
While rolling on the floo-oo-oor.
Congrats, Erik! And thanks a ton for sharing what you know, and what you’re learning.
This blog has helped my career so much! Thank you for sharing information. I’ve worked with the types that don’t want to share, no one wants to work with them. This blog also encouraged me to buy some of the Training videos and I will continue to recommend your products to the people I work for.
It also helps make SQL Server better over all. The more people that can use SQL Server effectively, the more it will be used, the more companies will use SQL Server, and the more SQL Server jobs there will be.
Writing a query in SQL is easy, but using SQL Server to its full potential is a lot harder.
If we don’t share our knowledge, we may walk into the office one day and find ourselves replaced by some guy who thinks the Starbucks menu is a list of proper nouns.
I never understand your references, but keep up the good work!
This blog post is the biggest reason why I like reading your stuff and talking to you in person. You’re easy to talk to and personable. Keep up the great work, one day we’ll need to hit the weights 🙂
Thank you! For shearing a great knowledge with us and one of the best thing about you is your writing style is awesome.
I work in both Oracle and SQL Server databases. One of my complaints about Oracle is that there are basically one or two people in the entire world who have reliable search results for Oracle concerns/errors/problems/things on Google. Oracle DBAs horde knowledge like gold. And, maybe it is gold for them. But that makes my job harder.
I love that SQL Server has so much more knowledge out there for folks who aren’t sporting the long white beard of DBA Knowledge +4 (+7 vs. newbies).
Congratulations on the milestone! Thanks for sharing the knowledge in an entertaining way.
Thanks for the time you give it to us by sharing what you know and how we can improve day by day. I have learned a lot and will continue to learn more in coming days through your bpost. Congratulation to you and your team. Thank you all.