It’s TSQL Tuesday again! This month our host is Riley Major (b/t) and the subject is Giving Back. He’s given us two options here (as well as the side option of your favorite 2017 improvement). Pick a way that you’d like to give back to the community and talk about it, or if you already give back, talk about what you are doing and how you got started.

Well, I blog. I do other stuff too (answer questions on #sqlhelp and stack overflow and write crossword puzzles for SQL Server Central) but mostly I blog. I’ve been blogging fairly consistently for almost 6 years now. I started at 1 post a week, and then after a couple of months I went to 2 posts a week and have been doing that pretty consistently ever since.

So how did I get started? Sometime in Mid 2012, my company was doing a lot of reorging. Now, this is nothing unusual for a large company but it was starting to make me a bit nervous. Me having a job is (and was) very important to the well being of my family. (True for many of us I’m sure.) Now, I didn’t see me having a problem over the next couple of years, but 3-4 years down the road? I was nervous. So I started thinking. If I lost my job in 3 years, what was the best thing I could do now to make it easier to find a job then? I’d been hearing this interesting idea.

Blogging = Online resume

So if I started blogging I could have years of blogs to point someone to, to be able to say See, you should hire me. Now, along the way, I learned a few things about blogging.

• It’s not just an online resume, it’s an online notebook for ideas and scripts that I would continue to use for years later.
• The time and energy I put into my blog made me a better employee, and made it less likely I’d lose my current job.
• It can be cathartic and in general makes me appreciate my profession more.
• I’m helping other people.
• Through comments and discussions about my posts other people are helping me.

So there you go. I started with a completely selfish reason. And yet, now I can’t imagine my life without blogging and the friends I’ve made because of it.