Designing a Well Lived Life: Checking In (May 2022)

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

  • Focus on health (exercise, eating, stress): Most of my efforts for health are revolving around my treatments. I've done the occasional mowing and playing drums for exercise, but overall that hasn't been consistent. I'd like to get back to some consistency but that has proven difficult to manage (usually my mornings are compressed, which is the prime-time for me getting some exercise on the exercise bike).

  • Complete my game design projects to allow others to enjoy them: Didn't make much progress on this for this month. I'm finally feeling like I can tackle these, so I hope to make progress this month. Track my progress for each day.

  • Do more non-work programming and chase my "white whales": Kinda stalled on this as well. I've been working on getting back to this, but it's challenging to work on them when more "fun" things like making music come along. Perhaps I could use playing with Bespoke Synth and Surge as a way of rewarding myself for doing programming. Interesting idea.

  • Be more mindful and focused in my day-to-day activities: I haven't been as mindful as I would like. I found myself really digging into social media more than I should. I'm going to practice with using the website for Mastodon less, but also try to refocus that nervous energy to something more aligned with what I want to accomplish in the world.

  • Add more joy into my life, either with games, reading, or other relaxing activities: I've been finding myself reading more (Reading "After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul" at the moment, along with "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity"). Also been playing games under MAME and Hatari. Starting to have the energy to try to play some solo RPGs as well (or at least consider it, whereas before I didn't feel I had the energy at all).

  • Allow myself to do more with less (distractions, acquisition, commitments, etc.): Still riddled with distractions but am working with cutting them away to focus more on the present. Also went through my closet to remove a lot of cruft. Am working on a project to declutter each of the spaces in our house since they've become unmanageable at best. Hoping to make progress on this over the coming months. I have let myself go with picking up music and books though. Need to just let them go for the time being. Also haven't been participating in crowd-funding projects as much (though there have been a few that got my attention).

  • Notice when I'm overwhelmed and let go as much as I can: This is getting a little easier to notice but it's still hard to realize that I don't have the energy I used to have. Taking a nap is not in my nature (at least, not voluntarily), so giving myself permission to just head to bed for a bit is pretty challenging. I'm getting better with this.

  • Declutter: See above with my decluttering efforts.

  • Continue removing debt: Making progress with this. I might have one credit card paid off by the end of the year, and significant dents made in the rest of them. I'm stating to see the end of the tunnel.

For June I'm going to work more on focus and decluttering. I can't do as much outside but I can work a bit in he garage and basement to get those spaces so they're not as cluttered. I'm also moving the boxes and other stuff that has accumulated in my den into the basement for processing. Lots of stuff has just been sitting there in these boxes and it's high-time to determine what needs to stick around and what can be let go.


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