Skiing in a winter wonderland

What a gorgeous afternoon! The mid-afternoon sun was doing its best to warm up the frigid Wisconsin air. Its shine was causing the snow crystals on the ground to sparkle, blinding you with its brilliance.
In short, it was a beautiful winter day and perfect for one of my favorite sports: cross country skiing. I can't think of a better way to spend a winter afternoon than gliding through forest trails smoothly and swiftly on skis.
It's a sport that can be as relaxing or exhilarating as you'd like. You can crawl slowly on wooded trails or fly down hills, turning at the last minute so you don't crash into that tree near the bottom. I settle somewhere near the middle: I love the quiet moments where you are just enjoying being outside, and I like those moments where your heart gets pumping as you tumble in a pile of snow in order to prevent hitting that skier in front of you.
Most importantly for me, is that it gets me outside during the winter. I think, for every season, you have to have something to look forward to that gets you outside. You can ski in frigid temperatures, because you stay pretty warm. The only requirement is of course: snow. You can't really make a cross country ski course. And the joy of it really, is to be able to wander wherever you want. You can go any park or open space with snow. It's quite liberating.
So if you're in a cold snowy area, give it a try. It doesn't take that much coordination. Renting skis isn't expensive. And, it will make you feel better about the winter instantly.

Work Stress

Wow, I had a rough week. Well technically, it started at the end of last week, but who's being technical. Essentially, in the work I was doing, I discovered that I had made quite a few mistakes. I suppose bugs is the technical word for them.
I just found errors in my code. Most of them were understandable, excusable perhaps. A few were just plain dumb. The worst part of it, though, was that I kept finding them.
Every step I went through I seemed to find something else that I had done wrong.

To be honest, my boss was great. He would say "glad you found it" and "quit being so hard on yourself" every time. But I just got more and more frustrated. I found I was thinking about work outside of work, which is something I don't usually do. I even had a few awful work-related dreams. And, my typical stress reaction: my stomach started hurting. My confidence was just essentially shot.

In reality, of course, it wasn't a big deal. The bugs brought up some issues and questions that my boss and I had to work through anyway. I was going to have to redo a lot of this, because of those issues anyway, so fixing the bugs and re-running the work wasn't really a waste.
Today, he said to me "Some people would have not found the bug, or just kind of buried it". So, at least I had that.

In truth of course, everyone makes mistakes. Particularly when you program a lot: bug free programs are non-existent. I'm going to make a ton of more mistakes in the future. Of that, I'm sure. Hopefully they aren't significant, or serious, or are in anything that gets published.
Hopefully I don't stress out like this again. Finding ways to let go of work, or anything when things get rough is difficult, but important. Every job has problems. Mine is generally pretty relaxed. But when the stress does come, you must be ready to cope, and move on through it.