End of Another Chapter

TL;DR
Today is my last day with SentryOne. 

And burnout has been kicking my ass HARD. But I've mostly defeated it and am looking forward to what's coming next.

A Retrospective
Just over four years ago, I had the fortune to join SentryOne. And today, that journey comes to a close. I am forever grateful for this fantastic chapter of my career and wanted to blog a bit about it (mostly for me, but if you're here, hope you enjoy the story too).

Never Dreamed I'd Be In Sales... and LIKE IT
When I was a very young child, I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up and said a "salesman." My father was in sales, which is most likely why I gave such an answer. But then I discovered video games, which drove me to computer science, and while eventually lead to databases and SQL Server. In 2013, I started speaking and found that I was good at it but really loved it. Through speaking and events, I met many wonderful people including Scott Fallen, who recruited me into SentryOne, as a Solutions Engineer (aka a pre-sales engineer). 

When I started as an SE, I never knew such a role even existed. And in my first few months, I thought I made the worst mistake of my life! At that point, I knew how to present, teach, train, and consult. But there's a different nuance with a pre-sales role. You do all of those things yet you don't do any of them fully. Eventually it clicked in my brain, that I needed to not teach and explain, but rather to showcase, highlight, and most importantly, listen. Once I figured that out, I grew as a pre-sales engineer and found that it was one of the most rewarding roles I've ever had. It's true... I came to love pre-sales.

Change Is Inevitable - 2020
We all know how everything changed in March of 2020. What followed for me through the remainder of 2020, was a great deal of personal, community, and professional changes. 

Personal
Am not going to blog details publicly, but 2020 brought about many lows but some very wonderful highs too. And at the end of 2020, I moved to Boston to start a new chapter of my life there.

Professional
In the course of my career, I'd been a part of SEVEN acquisitions and/or mergers. I dodged two more, as those were coincidentally announced after I had given notice but before I'd left the respective company.

The craziest one was when Lehman Brothers shuttered. My company was a wholy-owned subsidiary of Lehman Brothers. I distinctly remember our CEO calling an all-hands Monday morning, telling us straight up that we had two weeks of money to pay everyone, and that he'd be spending every waking minute trying to find us a new home. He was successful and we had new ownership four days later.

Another job of mine seemed like a fantastic home for me. That company was a small start-up that had just been acquired. I was the first hire under the new parent company. Unfortunately, conflicts arose with another key employee and the environment became toxic, so I left after seven months. That worked out for the best because the next year, the parent company terminated almost everyone who had been acquired!

In October 2019, SentryOne was acquired, making it acquisition number eight for my career journey. It's frankly annoying how I frequently find myself at companies that get acquired! In some acquisitions, nothing really changed except the company name, e-mail addresses, and HR stuff. But other cases, well, a hell of lot changes. And not all change is for the better either.

Community
As a speaker, I continued to be extremely active as we shifted fully online. I wound up presenting MORE in 2020 after March, than in all of 2019, thanks to everything being virtual. As a user group leader, I embraced the virtual path and started hosting meetings twice a month. 

But when the end of the year rolled around, I came to a powerful realization - I was BURNED OUT HARD. 

Fighting Burnout - 2021
2021 rolled on in, bringing about many new changes. Deborah and I bought a new place together in Boston. As awesome as that is, moving and "new home to-do's" are still a significant stressor. And I was still feeling burnout and stressed. The good thing is that I was aware and conscious of it, so tried to mitigate it as best I could.

The hardest and easiest mitigation was electing to cut back on my community involvement. I relinquished my leadership role in the Chicago Suburban User Group. I opted to not speak at all during Q1 2021. And I reduced my speaking engagements dramatically the remainder of 2021. 

Finally I drastically reduced my social media presence and consumption. There were a number of controversies in the community, especially earlier this year, where I opted to remain silent. Frankly, I got to the point where I might only open Twitter once a day or only check DMs and that's it. It's been good for my mental health, but I do miss interacting with #SQLFamily.

What Brings You Joy?
When my first 2021 speaking engagement rolled around, I'll confess that I found myself dreading it. I did not have the energy or the desire to do it. I wondered if this was finally the sign that I should stop speaking entirely. 

But a commitment is a commitment and I'm glad I went through with it. I found that when "the lights went on and the curtains opened," I rediscovered the joy of speaking and presenting. I recognized that it was my burnout that made me dread it. But in the end, I did miss it and still loved presenting. 

Mourning the Past
Aside from speaking, I did my best to combat my burnout and stress. The summer of 2021 was particularly rough, with a few key setbacks that hampered my attempts to shake off my burnout. But more importantly, I realized that I had been in a cycle of mourning as well, not wanting to accept professional changes. In the end, I stopped resisting, came to terms with the passing of something I loved, and moved on. Once I did, I could finally look forward again and a weight was slowly lifted from my shoulders. 

Looking Forward to What's Next
I always say that I believe in "counting one's blessings." And a few weeks ago, one of those blessings came in the form of a new opportunity. As excited as I am, I'm going to wait a bit before I share where I'm going next. I'm doing this because I want to focus the next few weeks not on what's next, but on the now. I'll be taking the next month to fully recharge and eliminate any remaining burnout of 2020/2021. I'm done with burnout bullshit and am eager to move forward again.

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