Meme Monday: #SQLFamily

Thomas LaRock (t) assignment for Meme Monday November is about SQL Family.   When I saw the topic, I knew that I had to jump on the bandwagon and write something about this because this topic holds a dear place in my heart.

As most of you already know, I have had some health challenges in the past few years.   Earlier last year, I was starting to get more involved in the SQL community.  I joined Twitter and started to get to know people in the community, both virtually and in person.    I was amazed at how generous people in this community are with their time on helping others and sharing their knowledge!   I got hooked with #sqlhelp hash tag where I can pick a lot of smart peoples brains whenever I stumbled into a challenge and the highlight for me, was during summer 2010, when I attended the maiden voyage of SQL Cruise.    Not only did I learn a lot from that event, I made some really great friendships with some of the attendees.

Shortly after the cruise, my health faced a new challenge and I had to undergo three weeks of hell difficult procedures. The support I received from this community was completely above and beyond any expectations.   I had constant emails, tweets and messages from many of people in the community that lifted my spirit, gave me hope, and helped me through some tough times.   They sent me jokes to cheer up my day, made me laugh and some of them (you know who you are) sent a broadcast of prayer requests on my behalf.   Please note – I never met some of these people, and some of them, I only met them once in person!

Earlier this year, I was blessed with good news in my health and I decided that I wanted to go back to my mountain.   I had a new goal and started to train for it.   I mentioned my goal of summiting Mt Rainier on Twitter and the support I had from the SQL community, again, was completely awesome and a little unexpected.   On the rough day that I just didn’t feel like doing my work out or hike, I had countless encouraging messages, tweets and even phone calls from people on this community!   They (again) lifted my spirit!   The day of my climb, I had so many people monitor my progress.   I carried a GPS that transmited my location on the mountain and marked the map so people can see where I was.   It was completely overwhelming the support that this community, this family gave me.

Then there’s my wedding.   I had special table (the Denali table) just for my SQL People during our reception.   Some of them flew across the country just to attend our wedding!  I was honored, and touched.

Then there’s Portland Half-Marathon.   I wrote a post on its own about this here and Karen Lopez (t) wrote a beautiful recap here.    It’s beautiful.   It’s awesome.  It’s very real.

To summarize — this community, this SQL community is more than just a community for me.  They are my extended family.   They are there for me, not just during a good times, but through my challenging times.  Not just when I can’t figure out which index is slowing down the site, but when I am struggling to live life.  I love these people.

Thank you.   Thank you for being such an awesome bunch.