When I started working as an independent consultant two years ago, I had this idea that I could work mostly in the winter and take lots of time off in the summer. Well, things don’t always work out as planned. So far, I have much more client work during the summer months.

During the winter, I don’t waste time, though. I always have presentations to prepare, blog posts to write, Pluralsight courses to record, and newsletters to write. I stay productive no matter what.

In addition to work for clients this summer, I have been working on several projects. The book I started writing in January will come back to me for one last review in a few days, and I am tech editing another book. I just started working on my third Pluralsight course. I volunteer for the LaunchCode organization as a CoderGirl mentor and am co-leader of the PASS Women in Technology Virtual Chapter.

A couple of weeks ago, I looked at everything I had going on, including my speaking schedule. I have cut back on SQL Saturdays this year due to time and the travel expense, but I still have two coming up as well as PASS Summit and Dev Up. I made the difficult decision to not accept any additional speaking engagements through mid-November and maybe through the end of the year.

Again, things don’t always work out as planned. Just days after my decision, I received a message from PASS HQ telling me that I had been chosen as a speaker for 24 Hours of PASS, Summit Preview. This was completely unexpected and quite an honor that I just couldn’t pass up. OK, one more presentation it is.

My 24HOP session, Indexing for Beginners, will explain clustered and nonclustered indexes and why the right indexes make queries go faster. Be sure to check it out as well as all the other great sessions.