Meg Evans

I came home from vacation on Monday evening, and since then I’ve been feeling much refreshed. According to my Fitbit, my resting heart rate has gone down several beats. I’ve had dreams in which I am very healthy, adventurous, and full of energy. Although the partial scenes I remembered after waking up were not totally clear, all of them left me feeling good.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”

I’ve been on vacation this week, in Sarasota, with my husband and some friends who are rowing with us at the Masters Nationals regatta. Today was the first day of racing, and I had a busy schedule, with two quads (4-person sculling boats) and my single. The first quad was a women’s lightweight crew. We got down the course pretty fast and won second place. Then I rowed in a mixed quad with my husband and two friends who also rowed a quad with us at last summer’s regatta. We improved on our performance from the previous year and took third place.

By the time I rowed the single later in the day, I didn’t have much energy left, and I ended up finishing last. Still, I felt that I was rowing smoothly and not making mistakes, which was something. Every time I go out in the single, I feel just a little more comfortable in it. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought there was any possibility I would race a single scull at major regattas. They are tiny boats that feel as if they could tip over at any time (although they don’t really). It takes some persistence to get out and row one anyway.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”

While taking a break from my work this morning, I went out to the backyard and walked along the row of willows that I’ve been trying to keep alive. All of the willow bushes (they are no longer big enough to be called trees) are still surviving, although climate change stress has killed a few more branches that I’ll have to cut back in the fall.

I felt pretty cheerful when I saw that all the cuttings that I planted earlier this year are looking good. Even when it seems as if the world is falling apart, Nature just keeps on going, like the loving mother that she is, always finding ways to come back from adversity.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”

Although I had been planning to row after work on Wednesday with my husband and my teammate Deb, the weather did not cooperate. What had been forecast as a small chance of rain turned into a downpour that went on, and on, and on. We stood in the boathouse for a long time, just watching it come down.

Deb and I got into a conversation about how nice and cozy it would be to sit at home drinking hot tea while watching the rain. After a while the sun came out, and we saw a rainbow. By then we had given up on trying to row. The river surely would have been full of dead branches and other debris after so much rain. The parking lot had gigantic puddles. I was wearing my water shoes, but there was no way I could step carefully enough to avoid getting my socks wet.

Watching me try to pick my way through the puddles, Deb just grinned and said “Squoosh! Squoosh!”

“We can always pretend to be kids and jump in the puddles,” I answered, now feeling more cheerful.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”

Some days I wonder where my time has been going. Today didn’t seem particularly busy—just my usual work, doing some laundry, going to get groceries, and a workout on the rowing machine. Even so, it didn’t seem as if I’d had much quiet time to relax.

Sitting down to write my Nurturing Thursday entry, I decided to go with this word-art image, which caught my attention recently:

I’m not entirely sure that I agree with the idea of categorizing each moment as either positive or negative. Life is much more nuanced than that, and some moments feel as if they are neutral—just drifting along, without much impact one way or another.

Still, it’s a good reminder that even when we don’t seem to be doing much, there may be patterns going on beneath the surface that need to be examined. As for wondering where time has been going, it would be a good idea to change the “never enough time” subconscious narrative to a more self-nurturing perspective, such as having plenty of time to do whatever I want—and then make sure to follow up on it by taking the time to do something fun.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”

My husband enjoys being a rowing referee, and last weekend he drove to Chicago to work at a regatta there. He took some photos, which he shared with me, and said that it would be a great place for our team to go next year. The course does indeed look beautiful:

Although he asked me whether I’d like to come along, I declined. Our trip to Philadelphia over Independence Day weekend was a fun adventure, but I just can’t be on the go all the time. Instead, I spent a quiet weekend reading on my Kindle and puttering around in the yard.

I am still trying to find that elusive balance between drawing energy from new activities and giving myself enough time to relax so that the energy doesn’t all drain away. It probably will feel much easier once I develop a better sense of it.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”

Sometimes, at the end of a workday, right after I shut down the computer and get up from the desk chair, my first thought is, “Now what do I have to do next?” It’s not because I really have tons of obligations. Rather, it seems to happen mainly on days when I don’t actually have much to do. Because modern society is so busy, a quiet evening without much to do feels a bit ominous, as if something must have been forgotten.

When that happened to me after work today, I considered whether there might really be something I needed to do, but very little came to mind other than writing this post and doing some gentle exercises with a soft foam roller. I had already worked out on the rowing machine during my midday break (16 intervals of 200 meters, which was plenty). I decided that just letting myself be aware of these feelings, and just breathing, would be enough entries on the to-do list for now.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”

I’ll be traveling to the Independence Day regatta in Philadelphia this weekend with my husband and some of our teammates. I haven’t rowed there before, and neither has my husband, but we’ll be racing both our singles and our double.

Rowing on an unfamiliar river in a single is rather daunting because it is so small and tippy, compared to larger team boats. My women’s double partner Deb will be rowing her single too. She is better in a single than I am, but she still says she is nervous. It gets a little better each time, though.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”

This was a somewhat rushed Thursday — nothing major, but I’d had to reschedule a hair appointment, which ended up being close enough to a work meeting that there wasn’t time to do the grocery shopping. So, I defrosted some ground beef, assembled a lasagna, and put it in the refrigerator to cook later. After I got finished with my work at 7 PM, it was time to go down to the river with my husband and do the workout that our coach had assigned; it had 200-meter intervals.

Once I got outdoors and breathed in some fresh air, the hectic feeling went away. The heat of the afternoon was mostly gone by the time we started the workout, and we did pretty well. Then we rowed a little more to cool down, and we returned to the dock just as the sun was going down. Back home, we did an online post-row stretching exercise for five minutes while the oven was preheating, and the lasagna was done by the time we took our showers. I’m sitting here at 11:59 finishing this post, but it’s all good.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”

It is Sunday afternoon, so this is certainly the most belated Nurturing Thursday entry I’ve ever written. I worked later than usual on Thursday, and we had dinner late because my husband was at the boathouse, teaching a Learn-to-Row student who couldn’t make the usual class time. He is always very flexible and helpful. So, I thought I would write a blog post after dinner, but then I got a database error message. I told my husband, who maintains my blog on a virtual private server; but I also said that because he’d had a long day, I was not asking him to fix it right away. The post could be written just as easily on Friday, after all.

After he restarted the database program, my blog seemed to be back to normal; it got some comments on Friday. We went rowing after work. It was windy, but we thought that was good practice because we planned on racing Saturday morning in the Indianapolis regatta, which is held on windswept Eagle Creek and known to rowers (not so affectionately) as the Windy Indy regatta. We needed to get enough sleep to be well rested, so I thought I’d write my blog post after dinner and then go to bed. The database error showed up again, however—and once again, there was no post.

We woke up early on Saturday and gave my women’s double partner, Deb, a ride to the regatta. My husband also towed the boat trailer with his SUV; he is the club’s usual trailer driver. Our race results weren’t the best because the water was choppy, as usual for Indy, and we were struggling. After we finished rowing, my husband took some time to help rowers on another team, who did not have much experience traveling, to secure their boats properly on their trailer. Then we took our club’s boats back to the boathouse and, with our other teammates, put everything away where it belonged.

When we got home, I cooked dinner while my husband updated the database program; upon investigating, he had discovered that the version he’d been using was buggy, and that was what had crashed my blog. He also updated WordPress after dinner, although of course he was tired from the long day. By then, I was pretty tired myself, and just fell into bed after cleaning up the kitchen.

I am better rested today. Now that I’m finally sitting down to write this post, I feel gratitude for having a kind and helpful husband and, as well, for being privileged to know so many friendly and generous people. Even in times like these, when it often seems like the world’s ties have frayed, our communities are stronger in many more ways than we know.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”