Exactly two years ago I started my journey with SQLskills. It has been an incredible experience and I\u2019m grateful for my time with everyone in the company and also grateful for all the people I got to meet along the way. I\u2019ve gained friendships and working relationships that will last a lifetime.<\/p>\n

While this has been a great adventure, I found myself feeling over the last two years that I\u2019m a bit of a Hobbit at heart (hence the blog post title reference). I prefer the comforts of home and have missed the longer-term, multi-month engagements and projects that I\u2019ve worked on in the past in other roles. While I do a lot of consulting work at SQLskills, that work is mostly shorter engagements spread over many clients, so I realized a transition would be needed at some point.<\/p>\n

Paul and I worked out the plan last May, so this plan has been in-the-works for a while. Nothing dramatic to report and no regrets on either side.<\/p>\n

Where am I going next?<\/p>\n

I set up my own company and booked my first local client engagement in Minneapolis starting October 1^{st<\/sup> working with a local Fortune 500 company for at least the next few months full time, if not longer.<\/p>\n}

I\u2019ll still be partnering with SQLskills when the opportunity arises, be it a consulting engagement, guest-blog post or Pluralsight course.<\/p>\n

Not to be sentimental \u2013 and yet I am \u2013 so I\u2019ll share just a few of my favorite SQLskills memories. It was hard to choose, since there were so many and they may seem like simple experiences, but it is the simple stuff that means the most to me in life:<\/p>\n

\n
• Playing chess and drinking Prosecco late at night with Paul after class. We had the best conversations and sometimes Paul would even let me win (or rather, I would wait for him to get sleepy enough so that I would start winning).<\/li>\n
• During the Immersion Events when not teaching that day, Kimberly would invite me to tag along to pick up the books for the next week of class at Kinkos. We had our best conversations during these mini-road trips.<\/li>\n
• Visiting Jonathan in Florida and spending time with him and his incredible family. Jonathan is fiercely loyal and big-hearted (but don\u2019t tell him I said that).<\/li>\n
• Laughing at Glenn\u2019s stealth jokes and wicked-dry humor. Favorite Glenn catch phrases include \u201cthat\u2019s just silly\u201d \u2013 and how he gets all excited about his favorite processor chipset.<\/li>\n
• Weekly discussions with Erin have been incredible \u2013 discussing both life and SQL Server with her \u2013 and I always got something from the conversation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  So next week I\u2019ll be teaching in Seattle (IE2: Immersion Event on Performance Tuning<\/a>). It will be a great way to end this two-year adventure.<\/p>\n

  So that\u2019s all for now. But you\u2019ll still be hearing from me on this blog and elsewhere. Thanks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Exactly two years ago I started my journey with SQLskills. It has been an incredible experience and I\u2019m grateful for my time with everyone in the company and also grateful for all the people I got to meet along the way. I\u2019ve gained friendships and working relationships that will last a lifetime. While this has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sql-server-consulting"],"yoast_head":"\n