Tag: coping

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

Today’s tip is to spend some time on a creative task or activity.

I don’t think of myself as terribly creative, though I do like arts of various sorts. I play guitar, but that’s mostly covering what others have done, not really doing something new.

Cooking is one area where I do like to experiment a bit. Often I’m more derivative than innovative, but I have fun. Recently I got a set of new cake pans, actually gifted to me from a friend. I hadn’t made a cake in a long time, with kids out of the house, but I decided to try and do one from scratch. We were somewhat snowed in, but I had flour, milk, eggs, sugar, etc., so I found a recipe and put something together.

It came out pretty good, despite being a bit of a pain to go through this particular recipe. If you want to try it, here’s the link: https://www.recipetineats.com/my-very-best-vanilla-cake/

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

Today’s tip is to stop, breathe, and sit quietly for a minute. Repeat a few times.

I breathe often in yoga. It’s helped me to think about my breath at other times in life. However, I often find the workday hectic, with lots of different tasks for me to deal with. I like to power though the day, taking breaks exercise, cook, or maybe play guitar. Often these are “working” breaks.

My task today, and really more days, is to find a way to take a short break multiple times and be. Sit outside, do nothing, just appreciate life.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

Today’s tip is to find enjoyment in some manual task today, outside of work.

I live on a horse ranch, but I’m not really a horse person. I’m a reluctant stable man and ride, mostly at the request of my wife. Taking care of the horses isn’t something I do often, but it does happen regularly, especially as the kids are gone.

We had a historic snowstorm the last week, which resulted in lots of extra work to try and care for horses. My wife did some, but I helped out, taking some breaks from work. One day we had to get hay into nets, which helps the horses pace their eating. Normally this is process of putting a net partially on, flipping the bale, pulling the other side, repeat. When I do this myself, this is how it looks at the end.

Because of the melting snow, the mud, and snow piled up, we couldn’t flip the bales. The nets were also full of mud, so while I got a little snow moved and loaded a bale on the tractor. I then unloaded it on a trailer and got a large round container. My wife, her employee, and I all then moved hay into the net manually, which is less fun than it sounds.

However, it’s necessary, it saves some money, it’s hard, but it’s satisfying. Whenever I have to do horse chores, I try to appreciate the benefits. The physical effort, the tangible accomplishment of seeing something getting done, and the appreciation from others.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

Today’s tip is to pause to just watch the sky or clouds for a few minutes today.

I’m lucky in that we often have clear days in Colorado. It’s one of the reasons we moved here, because of the weather.  Most of the places above us are either very hot or humid.

However, when I saw this tip, it was cloudy. In fact, it was in between our storms last week. I went outside, snow covering everything, temps about 30F (around 0, –1C), and clouds everywhere. It was a blanketly cold day.

I had to go out and manually disconnect the arms from the gate to try and get it closed. There was too much snow for them to work, and I needed the gate closed so baby Phoebe could enjoy a day out.

I drove up, ski pants and gloves, and slowly dug out the gates with hands and feet. I’d forgotten a shovel, but I managed to get to the connection pins and release the gates. I then cleared snow to move them closed and tie them shut.

I took a few breaks, stopping to stare back at the house, looking out in the distance, enjoying the crisp air, watching the clouds in the big sky.

A good break from work, and an enjoyable chore.