Designing a Well Lived Life: Checking In (March 2019)

Checking in for March for my "Designing a Well-Lived Life" blogging. This is about making small changes during the year to make larger changes.

  • Administrative focus: I've been doing a little more with what Merlin Mann has termed "Power Puttering". THis is where you go around the house and see what needs to be done and either note it for later, or do it. It's been a mixed success, partially because I tend to start it only a few hours before heading to bed. Also my administrative tasks have taken a bit of a back seat during the month because of JoDee's foot. I've needed to pick up some of the slack while she was off of her foot. She's better now, but I'm still trying to help out a little more. I did a soft launch of my book site, which I'll share more as it comes closer to release.

  • Writing more: Haven't given this much focus. I've done a little editing here and there, along with some journaling, but this could be an area of focus for me for next month. Especially with Penguicon coming up and with my desire to present about it at Penguicon.

  • Design more: Not much progress here, but I'm intending to give this more effort in the coming month.

  • Programming more: Working on learning Godot for an upcoming presentation. That's given me some focus there, but not a whole lot. Hoping to do more of this in April.

  • Getting out of debt: Made some progress here. I read / listened to the "You Need a Budget" book which had some really good ideas for how better to structure our budget. I'm working on living beneath our means as best I can, especially since the next few months will be pretty lean.

  • Physical Health: No progress to report.

  • Mindfulness: This has been rather interesting. I've been pretty spotty with meditation, but have noticed that I am being more mindful when I notice my tendencies to want to "go fetal" when things occur that I'm not ready for. I've found myself thinking about the issue that I'm facing and calmly seeing it for what it is. That's a marked improvement. (Though I'm not an expert at this. I've had a few instances where I've still wanted to disappear from difficulty).

  • Deeper work: I'm hoping to focus more on this with a digital declutter / digital detox. A digital declutter / detox is when you consciously only use the essential pieces of technology and refrain from the rest. This is to help break you from the addictions of technology and mindlessly checking email / RSS feeds / social media. I read through "Digital Minimalism" from Cal Newport and liked the idea of cutting back on the distracting technology. I'll blog more about this in the next post.


links

social