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

This past month was pretty rough for me. I'm not sure if it's been burnout or depression or what-not, but I found myself really struggling this month to do anything of consequence. I did manage to get a few things moving (replacing my laptop, paying down debt) but overall my headspace has been not great. Much of this was around certain career paths and not taking more risks with getting into designing games. However I think it also helped me overall since I've got a clearer idea of what I want to do, and I think I'd be in a worse situation had I jumped in when I did. All-in-all it doesn't matter and I need to forgive myself for the mistakes that I've made. I saw a great quote recently: "Forgiveness is about giving up hope for a better past". That's how I'm learning to live my life. With that, onto the check-in.

• Work on my game projects at least three times a week: Nope. Nada. Zip. I did manage to pick up my games again and shake them just a little bit but they're still mostly dormant. I've entered a game jam called "Finish Your Damn RPG (Jam)" that ends on December 31st so I'm hoping to have at least one entry.

• Meditation and mindfulness: I did more journaling and pausing to understand my emotions and where they're coming from. That helped me make it through this month on a positive note.

• Work with less distractions and more focus on deeper work (Relentlessly prune bullshit): Finding myself craving more distractions this month and falling into old patterns. I need to remember that I can log off of social media and the world won't blow up, but sometimes I wonder.

• Walk or ride the recumbent bike at least four times a week: Dead stop on this one. I did play drums on occasion, but I'm starting to feel the girth coming back. With winter approaching and the rain being more prevalent than ever it seems I'm going to need to either use the bike more or just get wet.

• Get further out of debt: Making progress on this, but I'm also noticing patterns of retail therapy creeping in. November I'm going to do my best to curb my spending or at least be more mindful about it.

• Play more games: I've attended more game conventions than games (Big Bad Con and Metatopia). I think part of my malaise has been that I haven't really given myself the downtime to play games. Need to give this more space.

• Spend at least one night a week working on programming projects: Nothing to report here, but I'm starting to get the itch to want to program again. Thinking that Racket might get some attention as that was an area that I liked the most.

• Declutter and make our place more alive: Things have been accumulating again. Funny thing when you're burned out or depressed: you don't want to do much of anything to make things better. Going to start small by cutting up the cardboard that has accumulated in the basement.

This next month has a lot of potential going for it. I'm feeling more energized and understanding that I can't take on everything. I've also re-realized that things on my next actions lists are there because I put them there. If I need to remove something I can. If something isn't getting done then I can figure out what to do with it. I need to be more fluid with what goes into my virtual attic for the time being instead of carting around things that I know I'm not getting to in the next few weeks.

Onward!