Finding a way to stay in love with your job can be a challenge.
A while back we were lucky enough to go see Weird Al in concert here in Dallas. And to say the least he puts on such an excellent show it’s hard to convey to you all… but of course I was raised on Weird Al so I’m biased. Now I know this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with DBs, but it does I promise. See, he’s such a great performer. He has tons of costume changes and still really gets into his character like he did 20yrs ago. So many performers take their fame for granted and start hating live gigs and they really start to despise the songs that made them big. And I’m sure Al gets tired of doing some of the older material, but it doesn’t show in her performance. He’s still just as excited as he ever was to sing his original hits. And yes, some of his early hits are still in the show because he knows the audience loves his new stuff, but they also come to hear the songs they grew up on. So my question to you is… do you still love your job as much as he does? I’ve seen so many burned out DBAs who hate going to work, and who hate getting user requests, etc. They’ve gotten into a place where they don’t know how to enjoy being a DBA anymore and it’s just sad. I recently took my part in the firing of a fellow DBA whom I believe was one of those unfortunate ones. He has stagnated his knowledge about 2 decades ago and even though he still came in every day i could tell that his heart just wasn’t in it. His solutions got worse and worse and he started making more and more mistakes. I eventually had to let him go because of a combination of all of that. We all need to be like Al. Sure there are days when I can’t stand talking to my users. Sure there are days when I don’t want to get one more email about a failed SSIS package. And of course I get sick to death of opening perfmon to diagnose problems I shouldn’t be having because of devs who won’t listen to reason. But as a professional you have to squash that stuff while you’re at work and do your job. You have to find a way to love it one day to the next. Find a way to put a new spin on it that’ll keep you interested. Learn a new method of getting your info or automating it. Hell, wrap some powershell or .net around that bad boy and get the cool back in our life. Or at least you won’t have to mess with it much anymore. This’ll do a couple things for you. First, it’ll help keep you from getting so tired of it because getting at the info is minimal trouble. Next, on those days when you are tired of it, it’ll make the task easier to take. IT is one of those jobs where you shouldn’t get bored easily. There’s just way too much to keep you occupied. Look, I know our job isn’t as fun as his, but after this much time his job is a chore too. And I guarantee you there are days he wishes he’d never written some of his songs. But when the day is done, and he’s in concert he never fails to give the people a great show. So give your people a good show. And if you can’t, then do something else.
