I almost died. I’m sure a lot of you already know this but just to be clear, I should have. I’m not sure exactly what my odds were but from what I understand, everything taken into account my odds were well under 1%. Now, I say this not because I’m looking for sympathy or well wishes or anything like that but as context for the rest of this post.
I want nothing more than for the people around me to be happy. To that end I try my best to be supportive and friendly online. I don’t always succeed but that’s my goal. One of my favorite tweets is this one:
As the tweet implies, I don’t do this because I want any form of reciprocation, but because I feel like it’s the right thing to do. At least partly because of this I’ve made a lot of friends/acquaintances over the years. And until recently I hadn’t realized just how many.
I ended up in the hospital and to be fair, I was unconscious so I’m not entirely sure how all of this played out but my wife ended up tweeting at least some of what was going on. Within hours I had large numbers of people checking in on me, tweets, retweets, likes, direct messages, even a fair number of text messages. A few days later Steve posted a Digital Wishes for Ken post on http://www.sqlservercentral.com which got quite a few comments. I even had several people offer to drive (or even fly) in to provide support if need be. I continue to get texts and DMs and tweets wishing me well and checking in on me.
The huge amount of support I received completely overwhelmed me and got me thinking. I’m not that special. I’m really not. I’m just someone who cares about those around me and wants people to know that they are important and wants them to be happy. But I’ve put a lot of effort into pushing that message over the years and even more right now. And I honestly believe that the reason I received such an overwhelming response is because I’ve made it a big part of my online personality.
I guess what I’m trying to say is be kind, be nice, be polite, and above all else care about each other. You never know when you’ll need it back.