Meg Evans

When I woke up this morning and went into the home office to start my workday, I heard cold winds howling. It was so dark outside that I hadn’t wanted to open the blinds in the kitchen when I got my coffee.

The sun never did come out, but everything felt brighter when my husband came into the room and sat down at his computer. No need for sunny days to feel cheerful when we have each other’s company.

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 has been busy this week and hasn’t gotten quite enough rest, but he has been cheerfully taking a few minutes here and there to watch goofy reels and other online amusement. A good laugh goes a long way toward a healthy life—although, of course, it doesn’t make up for not sleeping long enough. I’ll make sure to let him rest well over the weekend.

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.”

Today started out dark, with howling winds, after much of the same yesterday. Because I’d been out to get my eyes checked, I hadn’t gotten in a full workday, so I made up for it by putting in 10 hours today, with a long break in the middle for my rowing workout. By evening, I didn’t feel motivated to do any blogging and had to push myself to sit down and write this post.

Even so, there’s something good in it. I am grateful to have a remote job and a comfortable house, where I don’t have to care how much the winds howl.

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.”

Traveling to Sarasota was fun, and my husband and I took second place rowing our mixed double this year. The return trip was somewhat tiring, however. On Sunday, my husband drove for several hours to our hotel in Tifton, Georgia, after a long day of rowing, while he took a midnight call in the car because his company was doing a code deployment overnight. The Monday drive home included a detour to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to drop off two boats for other rowers.

Since he bought the mini trailer last year, he has often carried boats for others. He likes to be helpful, generally; and you never know, especially with older rowers, how many future opportunities they might have to compete in a regatta.

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.”

Instead of taking the entire week off from work during a spring break trip as I did last February, I decided to bring my laptop and work part of the day on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

My husband regularly travels with his laptop, in part because he has fewer vacation days than I do, but mostly because he is a senior software developer and could be called upon at any time if there is an unexpected problem with the company’s website. That’s fine with him because working remotely is so much better than the way things used to be.

Whether or not we have work to do, we feel fortunate when we wake up each morning.

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 felt somewhat unfocused today—not because of anything in particular, but just a lot of errands the past few days and getting ready for our spring break road trip to Sarasota. This year it’s easier for us because the Greater Columbus rowing club will take all the boats from Ohio on their trailer, instead of my husband taking them on Greater Dayton’s trailer as he did last year. He doesn’t mind, but it’s good that he is not always the trailer driver and can have a more relaxed trip to the (hopefully) sunny South.

After finishing my work for today and setting out my clothes for packing, I feel more comfortable just sitting here composing this post, without much else going on now. 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.”

I wouldn’t say that I have grown old and wise yet, but I have developed at least some perspective over the years. Issues that once seemed to be insurmountable problems feel more manageable as they gain context. I have more confidence that they can be turned around. Even when they have been going on for what seems like a long time, I find it easier to visualize a future in which they have faded away.

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.”

Last week I didn’t spend much time online. I felt like reading an old ghost story instead, so I checked Wuthering Heights out of the library, using the Libby app and reading it on my Kindle. It wasn’t as much of a ghost story as I had expected. Not a love story either, although it has passionate characters. Probably the best category for it would be psychological drama.

But then, if classics were easily described, they wouldn’t be classics, I suppose.

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 indoors for most of this week’s cold days, except for some errands on Tuesday. Today was dark and gloomy, leaving me with a touch of the winter blahs. I knew I’d feel better after doing my rowing machine workout and getting my heart rate up; the plan for today called for high-intensity intervals, and I’d done this exercise before and had a good sense of how to pace myself for them.

Still, it took me most of the day to summon up the energy to get started. The blah thoughts, in which my imagination constructed a stressful scenario that was not in fact likely to happen in real life, hadn’t totally gone away by the time I finished my warm-up row, but the intervals effectively left me with no thoughts of anything but sucking in more air. The workout itself was not much fun; but afterward, I felt much better.

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’m always wondering what day to take down the Christmas tree in mid-January. Until then, I leave it up because it brightens the winter gloom and I’m not quite ready for the holidays to be over. Then I become indecisive, wanting more sparkly lights on dark days and also wanting to put the tree away for another year and feel that spring is getting closer.

For now, I’m going to let the decision wait a few more days and just look at the stars, instead.

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.”