Canadian Vacation - A Great Beginning

Arrived yesterday after 13.5 hours of flying from Auckland to Vancouver. I managed to score a row to myself and so was able to actually stretch* out for the night. When I arrived in Vancouver yesterday mid day, I was actually reasonably well rested. :)

My awesome sister Nicole was waiting for me when I emerged from customs and collecting my bag, bearing gifts of a chocolate dip donut and a salted caramel mocha. Both were appreciated (and consumed) on the ride back to her house. There's no picture of the first donut as the frosting had attached to the side of the bag. I'll try to snap another chocolate dip when I get a chance so that I can complete the set.

After dropping my stuff off, we went for a walk to the mall near her place to get a SIM card for my phone and to just stretch out my legs from the journey. The trail across the road from her house had that sign you see below. Apparently the bear was breaking into the rubbish shed at her building. I've gotten used to there being no large mammal predators(other than humans) ... I'm not in middle-earth any more! 

*as much as you can stretch out when you're limited to three seats on a plane.

SQL PASS Summit 2012

Only 4 more sleeps until I get on the first plane that will ultimately bring me 12,000 km away to Seattle for the PASS Summit. I'm really looking forward to it. My first two passes through the schedule have seen me squeal with delight as I see so many topics of interest.

In my day job, I don't have a specific focus. I'm not a DBA or a developer or a BI person or a "data scientist" (I hate that title) or any of the usual labels. They all seem to apply depending on the time of day. As a result, I'm just as interested in the half day session on query performance tuning as I am on the advanced PowerPivot and PowerView things. And don't get me started on the SSIS stuff. There are so many things I want to absorb ALL THE INFORMATION on.

I'm sure that if I was able to clone 2 more of me, I could almost go to all the sessions I would like to.

I'll try to post some summaries here of the things that I pick up as I go.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

Happy.

Such a simple word. Such a minefield.

What does being happy even mean? I looked up happiness on Wikipedia. The definition was listed as “Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.” 

The last conversations I had with my ex were about happiness. The first happened on the 6^th anniversary of our move to NZ. We’d been separated for almost 3.5 years at that point and he asked me if I was happy. I thought about sending him a flip “yep” and being done with it. In the end, I sent him a slightly longer answer of yes and some of the reasons that I was happy with the life I have. I wouldn’t say that I am living a life of intense joy, but I am content. 

The last conversation was a little angrier (see my previous blog post). His feeling is that every person’s happiness comes at the cost of someone else. And so he wished me joy in mine knowing that it came at the cost of his. 

That conversation rolls around in my head. First of all, he has rewritten a lot of history to come to that conclusion and I can understand wanting to lash out and blame everyone else for your problems instead of taking responsibility for the choices you make. On the other hand, though, is he entirely wrong?

I don’t mean that we need some sort of Schadenfreude in order to be happy. Think about the decisions you make in your life in the pursuit of your own happiness. Do you always take into account how it will affect the others around you? 

It’s something I’ve been wondering lately. I’ve definitely made some selfish decisions over the last 4 years. Some of those choices, I’m not proud of. Others, though, I wouldn’t change at all, even though some people were hurt as part of the decision. At what point do I admit that (sometimes) when I snatch some happiness into my life, I’ve grabbed it from somewhere / someone else? 

Of course, I know that some happiness just comes. If it’s a lovely sunny day and I get a glow of joy from the feeling of the warmth on my skin, nobody gets hurt from that. What about the choices that do / will / could hurt others? If I know in advance, does it make me a bad person to take a little joy where I can find it? What criteria make it less “evil”? These are the things I ponder.

In the end, perhaps happiness is just an illusion. Fortunately, I like illusions.

Irreconcilable Differences

He said: "I gave up everything when you left. I hope you're happy." She said: "I gave you everything when we were together and lost myself trying to make you happy. Now I make _me_ happy." And with that, a story that occupied 21 years of their lives reaches closure. Fin.