So the full moon has traveled through Libra constellation. During this time, it was on my 12^th house (or the secret zone). I had told myself that I was going to reflect on both why I want to transition from academia into industry, and why I’ve allowed my health and fitness routines to fall by the wayside and me falling back onto bad habits.

So why do I want to move from academia to industry? One reason is that there are more jobs in industry that pay a lot better than jobs within academia. Yes there is still the pressure to get results, but within industry bad results are even viewed as positive (in that you may have saved the company thousands of dollars by proving that the assay won’t work). There is also a better chance of the results of your research having a direct impact on society (instead of possibly ten or twenty years down the road in academia, if you can still get enough funding year after year for your project). And finally you’re valued as a member of a team, and not just as another pair of hands that can do something to make the principle investigator look good.

I’m tired of having to job hop due to academic funding running out (both post-doc positions ended because of funding running out, and it’s quite possible that both of the staff positions I’ve had are also going to end due to funding issues as well [though it is a little hard to tell with my current one right now; as I still have six months left on the contract]. Basically I want a stable job that gives a good salary, one where I’m constantly learning, engaged, and excited about showing up to work.

So why have I let my health and fitness slide backwards? I had been doing so good when I first started off with T25 a couple of years ago—I managed to lose quite a bit of weight with that program and then followed it up with CLX & 21DF. I think the starting sliding point was both being unemployed for a couple of months after my second post-doc position ended, coupled with my bike accident where I bruised the hell out of my left leg, and couldn’t work out for about three months until everything healed. During that time, I was barely watching what I was eating, and then I fell into a spring/summer funk to where I didn’t feel like having my shake in the morning—and things just spiraled from there.

Currently I have managed to lose two pounds during the month of April, bringing the yearly total to just a little over six pounds. It’s a goal to try to drop another four to five pounds during May to get down to (or below) 190. I know that when I get home in the evenings and after feeding the dogs, fish, and outside birds, I need to just do my workout and not sit around and relax and then try to do it (relaxing can come after the workout).

So what I’ve managed to unearth about myself, is that I need to (1) stop sitting on my butt and do my workouts in the evenings; (2) stay away from the sweets [fruits are okay; some granola bars are okay—cookies are not]; and (3) I need to focus on the job search [networking, and researching the different sectors/companies that I think I could be a good fit with].