Meg Evans

On Tuesday, I gave a presentation on Resilience, Stress Tolerance, and Flexibility, which I had mentioned in a previous post was one of my projects for this year. It was part of a series by several presenters, aimed at helping employees feel comfortable with digital transformation. The pace of automation at my company has been much faster recently, and people have been getting stressed about it, especially after all the disruptions in the world generally.

This was my first company-wide presentation, and although the audience wasn’t huge, it was enough to make me nervous anyway. I needed to take my own advice on helpful ways to calm down and find focus! But my mentor was very positive, one of the other presenters helped me by finding good animations for some of my slides, and everything went well. I even got a compliment on my avatar (I’ve been using the same one at work that I use here).

Afterward, I thanked my mentor for encouraging me to get involved with the presentation group and told her that the project definitely had improved my own skills in Resilience, Stress Tolerance, and Flexibility! Having the opportunity to work with people who are so kind and cheerful left me feeling very good.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

Sometimes, we all need little reminders to be kind and understanding to ourselves. I’ve never actually posted paper notes to myself around the house, but I do think it’s a good idea.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

I ran in a 5K road race with my husband on Tuesday. We like to see the runners in their Halloween costumes, although usually we don’t dress up ourselves. It’s just for fun, and we are not competing against anyone in particular; so I was surprised when I saw that my time was more than two minutes faster than any of my previous results. All the rowing I’ve done this year must have improved my fitness overall.

But, truth be told, my legs were still feeling achy today. I did an online yoga class to stretch them out, and then some easy rowing on the erg, but didn’t push myself. Fitness is good, but taking care to get enough rest is important too.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

On Saturday, my rowing club traveled to a nearby regatta. The 5K race course is on a reservoir, without much scenery, and in past years it often has been chilly and rainy. I rowed in the women’s double race because my husband, who recently became a referee, decided that he’d rather ref than row, so we didn’t compete in our mixed double this time.

The weather turned out to be gorgeous, so he missed out on a good row. Although there was a headwind, the water wasn’t too choppy, and it was sunny and warm.

My rowing partner, Deb, is pretty strong, and we were almost as fast as the guys from our club who were in the men’s double race. Needless to say, my husband didn’t miss the opportunity to razz them about how close they came to getting crushed by the ladies. It was all in good fun!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

I didn’t have much energy this morning, which was the result of traveling to a rowing regatta last weekend and training harder this year generally. I woke up late, felt exhausted anyway, and sat at my desk feeling blah most of the day, except when I took a break to do the grocery shopping. The training plan had a strenuous erg workout on the schedule, but I felt like there was no way I could do it, so I didn’t even try.

In the afternoon, my husband got on a Zoom conversation with our coach, who said that we should take into account the stress of traveling. Although we hadn’t felt as drained of energy after other road trips, last weekend we rowed pretty hard in our race and improved our time significantly. So, if it left us feeling like all we could do was muddle through the week, that wasn’t altogether a bad thing.

To de-stress in the evening, I did a mellow 20-minute online yoga session. Then, to further shake off the blahs, I decided to post an encouraging message for Nurturing Thursday telling myself that I appreciated my efforts. We all have days like this sometimes. Doing the hard workout tomorrow should work just as well.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

This whole year I’ve felt displaced, as if I need to do more to orient myself in both time and the world, but don’t know where to start. I expect most people are feeling the same way, after so much disruption everywhere. But, for now, it’s enough to start where we are.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

When I woke up this morning, I had been in a dream where I was two different people in different places, but both parts of me were communicating somehow and seemed perfectly happy with that arrangement. Although I don’t remember the details clearly—as is the way of dreams—what I do recall is that in both of my separate lives, I was happy and surrounded by beautiful things. So, I would say it’s a good sign!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

My family has gotten scattered around the country over the years. We stay in touch by phone and mail, but it’s not the same as seeing each other in person. I like to think of friends as being part of a larger circle of family. That helps with feeling connected—which, of course, is something we all need.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

My employer has been training the managers this year on Psychological Safety, which involves creating a supportive environment where workers feel that they can express their concerns and will not be punished for asking questions or making mistakes. I believe that it is more important than ever in today’s circumstances, after people got totally stressed out last year and are still struggling to recover. More kindness and understanding are needed now, rather than unrealistic pressure to be perfect.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

This morning, my husband and I had a Zoom meeting with our rowing coach, Christine Cavallo, to talk about the sprint races we did this summer and what we’ll be doing in the fall season. We let her know that we were pleased with her training plan and that we’d both improved our speed, endurance, and consistency. Christine said that when she looked up our results from last month’s racing, she was surprised to see that we had competed in several sprint events during the regatta. She would have given us more work, she told us, if she had known we would enter so many races!

Truth be told, before we signed up for online coaching this year, we hadn’t realized how much a regular training schedule would improve our fitness. It’s very good to know that there are so many possibilities—both in rowing and in life more generally—for improvement.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.