Running Out of INT

 

"Where have you been?"

A look back at the last 7 months.

If you've spent any time on the internet in the last 10 years, you've no doubt seen this animated gif around. Classic John Travolta, scanning the room, searching for anyone else being there even though he clearly hears a voice. I felt this captured how I've felt about my blog and my work with The Viking DBA over the last 7 months. Perhaps no one other than myself has been asking where I went to. I can live with that. What I cannot live with is giving up and that's what I felt. So let's get into it.

December 2025

I was writing a blog post somewhat regularly, trying to accomplish 1 every week or so. My inspiration and guidance for starting this journey, Brent Ozar, even shouted me out in his weekly email blast! Queue the fan girling.....because I did hardcore! My read counts went way up thanks to that article. No comments and no engagement really, but people knew I was out there! And then the imposter syndrome set in. 
"Why on Earth am I doing this? The people who follow Ozar know as much and likely way more than me, what could I possibly offer them?"
"Oh man, now that folks are actually reading this I have to produce ultra quality content to keep up."
"I should just probably just stop, no one truly cares about what I have to offer."

Great thoughts huh? I have this strange personality where I make sure that others feel lifted up and encouraged, but cannot offer myself enough grace to do the same internally. Two or three times in January I sat down to write a new post and I'd simply get in my own head and stop. "I'll come back to it later" or "I don't care for how this is coming out, I need to rework these thoughts". Alas, I never did.

Caring for Family

Also around this time, my mother in law was battling illness. She'd been diagnosed with Leukemia in the summer of 2023 and began treatments. Which up until the middle of 2024 appeared to be working! Even so, caring for her and dealing with doctor appointments and said treatments were difficult. However the treatments began losing their effectiveness and we were left with essentially two options; an extremely difficult and somewhat risky stem cell replacement or keep doing what we were doing and ride it out as best possible. Through much family discussion and prayer, we opted for the stem cell treatment.
She underwent that procedure in October of 2024, took almost 2 months to recover from but she did! We had a few hiccups afterwards, but by and large by middle of 2025 she was cancer free! 
Late into the year though she began developing severe stomach pains and couldn't eat or drink much. The long short of it was that she had gall stones. Another family discussion and prayer led to the decision to get the gall bladder removed. This was extremely risky given all the medication she was on and even though she was getting around well her body was still fighting to fully recover.

The surgery occurred in January and over the next 3 months she would be admitted to the hospital for a couple of stints, the final one lasting over a month where the family would take turns spending the day there with her for comfort and also to communicate with her care team. Ultimately her body gave up the fight just after Easter of 2026.

Between my own feelings of inadequacy, helping to care for my mother in law, maintaining a full time job, seeing my oldest off to new adventures in Florida, caring for our youngest daughter who experienced a life altering event as well, I just flat out didn't feel like writing anything. I feel that's somewhat understandable.

So Why Now?

Going back to my inspiration, Mr. Ozar again, in a recent video post of his he mentions that a "paper" resume is simply not enough to stand out. Writing blogs, speaking at events, getting more "known" than having just a job is how one stands out when it comes to today's job market. It's how you cultivate a career. I'm not saying I'm out job hunting, far from it. Though wouldn't it be nice to be prepared should the need arise? 

I might not have the most cutting edge content. I certainly won't be breaking any new ground with my topics. From the outset though I said I wanted to make this blog for folks that were interested in database skills, physical fitness and hopefully get those two things to merge. I hope I can do that for someone.