Checking in for 2023-07-24:

• Last week my intention was to work with my feelings of overwhelm and focus my lists to only 2-4 items. I did pretty well with this. The one part that seemed to get in the way was just getting started. I found myself feeling some feelings of compression on some mornings. That's been a constant struggle for me. I look at my lists and have a moment of wanting to shut down. Part of that is how I structure my lists. I have a bunch of recurring tasks on my lists that are more to do with my morning routine and getting started with the day. So some of the mental disconnect is figuring out which of them to start first. I think I have a handle on that now, but some days it can feel a bit overwhelming.
• This coming week I'm going to work on my self-criticism / self-talk. I have a tendency to talk down to myself and denigrate the things that I do as frivolous or non-essential. That's bullshit. Part of it is that mid-western "humility" but part of it is the comfort of playing a smaller game rather than really pushing myself and getting myself out there. There's no reason I can't play a larger game. So that's where I'm going to put my focus this week.
• I got my appointment with the liver doctor (Dr. Vandad Raofi) scheduled for August 7th. I'm not sure what the results of this meeting will be. There is talk of trying to perform ablation on the cancer in my liver. But the last time that I spoke with Dr. Raofi the consensus was that liver surgery (the type to remove parts of my liver in the hopes of removing the cancer) might not be as effective because the cancer would return (See the post "Too Aggressive" for my thoughts at the time). So I have some trepidation about this follow-up. Part of me worries that this will be a repeat of the "we're not going to do anything because your cancer is so far advanced" meeting of last year, and part of me worries that I'll be going in for surgery. I've decided that the best way forward is to not overthink this and just let it be. It's not productive to worry about an either-or situation that might not even exist. Better to just focus on what I can do in this moment and deal with it when it happens.
• Did some more work on my interactive storyworld and did some more work with my game designs.
• Haven't done as much drum playing but have done some walking in the basement and some exercise, so there's that.
• Also been doing more work with learning assembly language on the Atari. Found some really nice tools for figuring out the display lists and handling player / missile graphics. I'll post these in a separate post.
• Still figuring out life without the Pebble. It's fascinating to me trying new things and trying to live without certain things. Definitely taking some getting used to. I forgot that one of the things that I use the Pebble for is figuring out where Pixel (our black cat) is at night. But I've figured out other things like notifications and the like. More experimentation needed.

More as I know it.