Meg Evans

This time of year, it often feels as if the pace of life has speeded up and, sometimes, that there is just too much going on. In the modern world, we do indeed have a lot of assorted obligations and distractions, which can make it hard to keep track of all the details.

What’s good about it, though, is that we also have a lot of choices. We don’t have to stay in one place doing the same things forever. Instead, we can pick and choose among the many possibilities that are open to us, keeping the ones we most enjoy and letting the others go.

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.

Now that the fall season has started for rowing races, my husband and I have been going to regattas on the weekends. On Saturday we rowed in Toledo’s regatta on the Maumee River. It was a lovely day with calm water and excellent weather.

We’ve been there several times, and by now that river is starting to feel comfortable and familiar. It’s very different from just a few years ago, when the race course seemed like a big, scary, dangerous place. When we made the decision to start traveling to regattas as novice rowers, sometimes it felt overwhelming. But as time went by, it naturally got easier.

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.

What’s been on my mind this week is how to avoid stagnation while, at the same time, not getting burdened with too many projects and obligations. And what I keep circling back to is that I need to live authentically and be open to new experiences; all the rest will mostly take care of itself.

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.

Earlier this week I had some old worries pop up. Apparently they needed to work themselves out from wherever they’d gotten lodged in my subconscious.

When I woke up today, I felt much better. It always helps to let those anxieties go, rather than holding onto them and being weighted down forever.

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.

Today I started feeling tired by midafternoon, which wasn’t surprising because I got less sleep than usual as a result of enjoying last night’s moonlight row with my husband, which I wrote about in my previous post.

I made a point of being kind to myself, enjoying my afternoon tea, and not pushing too hard to get everything done. After all, there will always be to-dos in our busy modern lives, but that doesn’t mean they need to leave us frazzled or displace the little things that make us happy.

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.

Some conversations at work over the past week left me with general feelings of being stuck in a rut and unsure how to get out of it. I often tend to make decisions intuitively, letting things settle into my subconscious mind for background processing until answers emerge. Usually something comes to me before much time has passed; but the what-comes-next question has been on my mind for several years, and it still hasn’t come clear.

So I have decided that from now on, I am not going to allow those cultural expectations about planning in detail for the future to rob me of self-confidence in the present. Rather, to get myself started on the right path, I’ll visualize my near-future self as having an abundance of positive energy, dancing joyfully through a world in which amazing new opportunities can be found everywhere.

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 afternoon I had a rather frustrating conversation with a person who was making so many assumptions, he couldn’t even begin to wrap his mind around the actual circumstances. Rather than letting it get to me, I went out after work and ran around the block in my neighborhood several times.

While I was still outside, my husband got home, and he immediately came out to run a few laps with me. It was very nice to have some company. Afterward we walked around for a little while to cool down. By the time we got back home, I was feeling pretty cheerful.

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.

Last weekend my husband and I took a mini-vacation and rowed in the USRowing Masters National Championship Regatta, which was held this year in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Every year the regatta moves to a different city, so this was a good opportunity to attend while it was at a reasonably convenient driving distance.

As the name suggests, it is very competitive and draws top-level rowers from all over the United States. So we weren’t expecting to win any medals, and in fact we did not; but we were pleased with ourselves for mostly staying close to the leading boats and finishing with respectable times. We enjoyed meeting rowers from all over and taking part in such a high-energy regatta. And who knows, maybe next year we’ll win something.

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.

Lately I’ve been feeling like I am doing too much and just running around in circles. It helps to be able to laugh at myself, though. At least I’ll always be amused!

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.

A few years ago, I bought a small water fountain to put on my front porch. It brightened up a shady area and made the house look more cheerful. Birds and chipmunks occasionally drank from it, although I didn’t often see them. Here’s a photo that I posted when it was still fairly new:

It didn’t have the best luck, however, in that it kept getting kicked over by pizza-delivery and package-delivery people. Last year, inevitably, a wing broke off one of the ceramic butterflies. I didn’t notice right away, and it was nowhere to be found. Buried forever in the bushes, probably.

I looked online for a replacement but didn’t see anything similar. Then winter came, and I didn’t think much about it. My husband surprised me at Christmas with a new fountain—a big sturdy one, much too heavy to kick over, with a pot to hold a seasonal plant. It sat in the box till spring came, and then we put it in the same area where the old one went.

We soon discovered that the new fountain had become a favorite gathering spot for small birds. They’ve been chirping and chattering to each other all the time, sounding much like office workers at the water cooler. The porch is certainly much livelier now!

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.