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

Doing this a little early because it feels like the end of November for me, and because I've had a much needed week off where I reconnected with a lot of the things that I've let slide. Things like programming older computers and just seeing the joy of drawing silly little lines using BASIC on an Atari 800XL emulator. I'll blog about that particular experience later, but for now it's on with the monthly check-in. ` * Work on my game projects at least three times a week: Didn't give this nearly the attention it deserved. I've felt stuck with these projects, but I think I have determined part of why that is. Part of it is because I would get up later than I wanted so my mornings were even more compressed than what I would have liked, and part of it was because I was tired and couldn't find any mental energy left to want to work on them. I also went through a patch of wondering if I should even work on them at all and whether I should just give up, but I've realized that I hate the idea of giving up even more. So I'll press onward and give myself permission to work on these as much as I can.

• Meditation and mindfulness: Need to return to this habit. I've let a lot of things go slack in the past few months and this has been one of those areas. I've let myself sit with the "busyness" of the day and not enjoyed the moment for what it is. This is an area to work on.

• Work with less distractions and more focus on deeper work (Relentlessly prune bullshit): I've done slightly beter with this, but only because I've needed to in order to get anything done. I've had to rely on a few tricks of just logging out of the browser sessions of chat programs and social media so I could allow myself to think and focus. I need to do more of this on a regular basis and not when I feel that everything is becoming too much.

• Walk or ride the recumbent bike at least four times a week: The weather changing has made the walking piece less appealing. Need to get back into the habit of doing at least some exercise per day.

• Get further out of debt: Making good progress with this. Hoping to add another credit card to the "paid" pile.

• Play more games: Played one game of "The Gardner is Dead" at U-Con with some friends, so that was quite nice. Also started playing more pinball on my phone and computer. Thinking of running some shorter solo games to see if that can give me some fun as well.

• Spend at least one night a week working on programming projects: Interestingly enough this one would have been "no progress" save for the little bit of retro-coding that I did this week. Thinking of trying my hand at doing some coding or at least if playing around with these things to give my brain some fun coding to do.

• Declutter and make our place more alive: Slow progress here. I've been breaking down boxes, but there's still more work to be done.

Overall this month was a tough one, but I'm grateful for the ability to reconnect with the things that have given me joy. Hopefully I can give myself more opportunities to reconnect and spend time doing things that help reignite my spark.