I know this is off topic and not really in character for me to begin with but here goes. I have recently been going thru a stressful period in my life with the week of PASS probably being the most stressful of my life that I can recall. For one I have recently experienced 3 deaths in my family including my mother. And my wife who was just getting over a bout with cancer that required some pretty extensive reconstructive surgery was diagnosed with another spot the week before PASS. We will know Friday how extensive it is when they operate. On top of that I have just had a series of very stressful events that all seemed to hit at once and for a while it broke me down. Now the intent of sharing this with you is NOT to invoke feelings of sorrow or to elicit your well wishes. Don’t get me wrong I truly appreciate what I know the community would have to offer and I have already had many friends do just that for which I am very thankful. You see that is the real point of this post. As bad as I felt for a while there are many many more people out there who have it much worse than I do and I need to remember that. It sort of hit me this morning at the gym when I had a great workout. I was able to up my weights across the board and did 4.5 miles of cardio and I still felt great when I was done. At 49 ears of age I think I can honestly say I am in better shape physically than a good portion of the population (at least here in the states) at half my age or younger even with my pinched nerve. So that got me thinking of the bigger picture and that lead to this post. No matter what you are going thru there is probably someone else going thru worse times and we need to stop and realize there are always things to be thankful for. One of the them for me is the SQL community that I have been part of for so many years now. There are a lot of good people out there of which I am proud to call my friends. Thanks everyone and remember to look up and past the bad times when they come around and enjoy life.
Andy