Tag: coping

Today’s coping tip is to make time to do something you really enjoy.

I do enjoy life, and I’m lucky that I have the chance to do a lot of things that I enjoy. One of those is watching and coaching volleyball. Technology helps here in a few ways, which lets me cope with a busy life.

These were on two days, but both were enjoyable times for me. First, thanks to cheap bandwidth and streaming technology, I was able to watch my daughter play volleyball in New York. My wife and I got up early and spent an hour watching her play last Saturday before we got on with our day.

Second, I left work a touch early to go watch high school volleyball, seeing a kid that I will coach this coming season play for her school. It’s a fun, enjoyable time, and one of the few times I can cheer for this kid without looking for ways to improve.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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 coping tip is to give yourself permission to say ‘no’.

This is my default, and it was something I consciously made a decision to do over a decade ago. In general, my instinct is to say no to new requests from others. Then if I have time, I can always change my mind if it’s important or I can fit it into my schedule.

I’m not so good at this in my personal life. My wife asks me, or I want to do something, I tend to say “yes” to myself. Especially if it’s a physical project that I can (or have) handle.

However, I do get myself overloaded at the ranch. I’ve started to try and remind myself to say “no” to some projects. Either they get delayed or we pay someone else to do them. I had some lawn work to do recently and I told myself “No” and asked a kid to tackle it.

Both a chance for me to say no and ask for help.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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 coping tip is to focus on the basics today, eat healthy food, drink water, get exercise.

I’m trying to make all of these a lifestyle change. In January, I worked on all of these, trying to lose weight. Which I’ve written about before. I was down about 25 lbs this year, then a bunch of travel, hormone therapy, and vacation had me up around 10lbs, but I’ve gotten back down to my 22-23lbs down from Jan 1. Not quite the goal, but close.

I wrote this a few days ago, but my routine for the day was to do the following:

• up early for work, make some black coffee, eggs, spinach, and turkey bacon
• take a large water bottle to my desk and drink it by lunch
• work and have a mid-morning protein smoothie
• more water and a break at 1130 to go to the gym.
• lunch, ground turkey in a salad with avocado
• more water and an afternoon smoothie around 400p
• break from work and cook dinner around 6-630p. Tonight I did chicken fajitas over cauliflower rice for me.

That’s my routine most of the time I am at home. Some variation on recipes, but the pattern is pretty close. The gym is sometimes earlier or later, but for the most part, this has worked well for me. Made coping with the transition out of the pandemic better.

Wish I’d started this earlier in 2020 or 2021.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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 coping tip is to forgive yourself when things go wrong.

A theme of being better to myself, starting with last Thur and Fri.

What’s gone wrong for me? I was working on some ranch chores, setting up a new gate opener. Some hard, physical digging, but also some planning and preparation. I also had to buy a few things, and in the process of the work, I mis-aligned one set of brackets and had to replace them. I had trouble with the digging and had to change tactics and re-do some work. I also chopped an underground wire, which I had to replace.

All of this made the process take longer, and also meant we manually opened and closed the gate for awhile. Getting out of a car in bad weather to do so is really annoying. I was annoyed with myself for inconveniencing myself and others, and making simple mistakes.

However, I’ve learned that this isn’t my full time job. I will make mistakes. I need to be ready to deal with them without getting upset or beating myself up. I tried to forgive myself and overall that helped, but not completely.

Something I need to work on more.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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.