T-SQL Tuesday #009: Beach Time: My Work Away From Work

This blog entry is participating in T-SQL Tuesday #009, hosted this month by Jason “@sqlrnnr” Brimhall (Blog|Twitter). You are invited to visit his blog to join the blog party. You are welcome to write your own participating blog post for the party or just to read more blogs participating in this month’s theme: Beach Time. This month’s theme is all about getting time away from the daily grind. How do you get time off? How do you prepare for it? Do you do anything special to ensure that your time off is uninterrupted?

For my part in this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, I’m going to talk about what I’ve got going on in the workplace outside of my everyday work space. Time away from work does not always mean time off. I’ve got a super secret squirrel project going that I’m really excited about. This project is allowing me to step outside of my normal duties and work on something that I’ve become passionate about recently. This project is allowing me feel like I’m having an impact on the future of something that I care about while at the same time protecting the worthiness of it.

Where was I last week?

This past week, I was away from work. Many of my co-workers thought I was on vacation, but the truth is that I was merely 1 building away. I work in building 22 at Microsoft. Just up the hill from building 22 is building 40. This is where I spent the past week. Does it seem odd to you that I would spend my week off at work?

Well, I wasn’t actually off work last week. I have gotten an opportunity to work on a special project within Microsoft. I can’t go into any details on the project yet until an official announcement is made, but it allows me to have an impact in Microsoft at the global level. I’ve committed to two additional weeks the week of August 30 through Spetember 3 and October 4 through October 8.

When I heard about this opportunity, I was excited and a little nervous. I wasn’t sure how my supervisor and the Director of Operations would react to the idea of me being away from the workplace for 3 weeks. Especially considering that it would mean that I would not be using my vacation leave for this time. Since I am working for Microsoft during these three weeks, I am still on the clock. I was very delighted to learn that my supervisor and the director were very supportive of my participation. In fact, they were more than supportive. The director commented that he believes that my extracurricular activities are beneficial to Microsoft and wants to incorporate it into my committments for the upcoming fiscal year.

So last week I was locked up in a room with some great SQL minds helping guide the future of …. oops, I can’t tell you!! Yet!! If everything goes as planned, I should be able to talk more openly about what I’m doing after the SQL PASS Summit.

Preparing for last week

Actually, I didn’t really have much preparation to do for last week. Most of the regular tasks or meetings that I perform on my team are well documented and has a backup person already designated. It was as simple as sending a few emails to make sure that everything that needed to be covered was. My team mates are always eager to help one another out, and they came through as usual.