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.