2022 Year in Review

Happy new year folks! I hope everyone enjoyed the festive period and was able to get some sort of a break to spend time with those closest to you.

This past year has been a busy one personally and quite a journey with this blog too. With that in mind I thought it was worth having a look back at the year to see how it’s gone and where it might be going in this new year.

Starting the journey

In 2022 I wanted to started posting in earnest so I set myself the target of posting some content once a week. I’d already created a handful of posts through 2020 and 2021 but this was the time I wanted to stick with it and find my rhythm. I must have something worth sharing from a number of years in and around SQL Server surely?

To start with I came up with a list of subjects or specific areas I wanted to touch on so I knew where things were going, I didn’t want to stumble with what the content was going to be about. This list was also extended through the year as I came across new challenges and had specific questions posed to me which I thought could benefit the community, plus it was a chance to further participate in T-SQL Tuesday on some occasions.

Planning out the content was an interesting process in itself. Since the goal was a post weekly it wasn’t necessarily to pick a particular area and put down all the thoughts I had in one post – there were certain areas which were too much for a single post. In those cases I took the opportunity to break them out into multiple posts. This meant planning the series ahead of time as best as possible and deciding which bits to discuss in the same or separate posts. It was certainly a learning process on some occasions such as when we looked at computed columns, temporal tables, or partitioning.

Pushing on through

In the middle of the year things were getting a bit bumpier with my writing process.

It was nice to see a few views to my blog each week through the year and as much as I’m doing this as a personal goal to myself, I also wanted to be blogging to help out the community, even if it’s in a very very small way. Well for some reason around June those views stopped. Like completely, stopped dead.

At that point I was still finding my rhythm with consistency in my writing – more often than not writing things on the day I wanted to post them rather than getting ahead of myself. That, coupled with my blog falling off the face of the internet, made some of those weeks feel like a bit of a chore which I really didn’t like.

I kept the posts coming and the goal alive for the year but some of those days did feel somewhat forced after a long day at work beforehand. That said, better things were to come.

New beginnings

A little after this slump in the middle of the year I’d applied for a new role at a business with a considerably larger SQL Server footprint than anything I’d worked with before. It happened that through the interview process they’d found this blog and the content I’d been writing about. They were keen to ask about what it was, why I’d started it and they were complementary about the content they’d read. This was certainly appreciated and spurred me on to continue with the content.

With the new role offered to me the next few months were consumed by documenting and handing over copious amounts of knowledge from various roles in my previous company. This did however provide a few more opportunities to find content I’d forgotten about and wanted to cover in later posts so the list continued to grow.

Through this time I also had couple of holidays booked with the wider family. Whilst looking forward to the time away, they did pose a challenge for my consistency with writing. It meant that I needed to get a couple of posts written and scheduled in advance. With some foresight and planning (and a late night or two) the posts were written and the holidays were very much enjoyed with no stresses.

Moving forwards

So here we are at the start of 2023. I’m extremely proud to have achieved a full year of 52 articles posted, and more importantly they’re content that I’m very happy with and have even referred to myself on a few occasions which is one of the exact reasons I’d started this blog.

Although I have had periods where I’ve needed to – and have – been in a solid place with my preparation, writing, and posting, I’m still not producing the content as far ahead of time as I’d like so that’s certainly something I’m looking to work on more this year. I’ve still got plenty of topics to cover and more I’ve not even thought of so I’m not short on the content side.

In terms of what I’m posting about, I still have a lot to cover with SQL Server and areas like structures, querying or performance, but I’m considering some opportunities to explore other areas closely related but outside of the database engine too. I’ve occasionally touched on elements such as Reporting Services or Integration Services which are deep wells themselves, so I’ll likely explore those areas in more detail at some point.

In terms of progression personally for my there’s a lot more areas I’d like to start exploring around SQL Server such as Azure, Power BI and potentially application code so there might be some forays into those worlds as the year continues too depending what avenues I progress with.

The final part of the journey for 2023 would be to try and attract a few more sets of eyes onto the content I’m writing. I’d be interested to see if there’s any feedback on the content and get a feel for which areas or topics are more interesting to visitors which may help shaping the direction into the future too.

Wrap up

This past year has been a journey for a number of personal reasons, this blog being one of them. It may not be the most content rich, well distilled, place to turn for SQL Server information, but I’m pretty happy with my scrawlings and I’m looking forward to keeping this momentum moving into the new year.

I’d like to reiterate how proud I am of the content I’ve produced this year for a number of reasons. The goal of a full calendar year of weekly posts has been achieved but more than that it’s what I’ve posted about and how the posts have come together which has surprised me. It may not be to everyone’s taste but I’m very happy with them.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone has any feedback for any of the content found on the blog or if you might be looking to start your own blog too (I’m sure you could do much better 😃). Whatever you do I wish you all the best for whatever 2023 brings for you!