So we’ve entered the last new moon phase yesterday, and I’ve decided that now would be a good time to reflect back on the different new moon goals that I’ve tried to set through out2018. One thing that I noticed is that I missed March (when I had the flu)—so that means I managed to do eleven out of twelve new moons this year (not bad for the first time trying to coordinate my life with the ebb and flow of the moon).

My goals varied a little month to month (depending on what constellation the moon was traveling through and therefore what house it was going through as well). So what were some of the goals that I had this year (and I’m only mentioning a goal once—even though most of these showed up more often than that through the year)?

I can probably divide up my goals into the following categories:

Personal, Professional,Finances, Spiritual, and Other.

Personal goals:

Starting to lose weight.

Working out daily

Getting my nutrition back on track.

Drink 60-70oz of water a day

 Try to read (or finish) one personal/professional development book a week.

Get through one short personal/professional development course.

Determine what my “personal”brand is

Professional goals:

Starting to add value and network more online (namely on Linkedin).

Working on my transition plan.

Work through the web development courses.

Narrow down my top choices for industry positions.

Start reading more in both the business and scientific worlds.

 Work through the data programming e-courses that I bought.

Determine what my professional “brand” is

 Determine the professional lifestyle that I want

Narrow down the biotech hubs I’d be willing to relocate to

Financial goals:

Thinking about investing some money into a short term CD (leaving a good chunk in the savings account).

Making monthly budgets.

Limiting purchases on campus to no more than three days a week.

Looking into ways of trying to increase my retirement account (without severely depleting my savings account or taking a big chunk out of my paycheck).

Keeping a monthly money log

Spiritual goals:

Mediate at least three days/nights a week.

Remember that disagreements happen, and that it is okay to remove people from certain aspects of one’s life.

Start doing daily (or evening) tarot card readings for myself again.

Other goals:

Having benchmarks set in terms of the number of hits/visitors to the blog for the month.

Start trying to get my Beachbody business up and running.

Starting to reorganize/clean bedroom, storage unit, and bathroom.

New overall 12-month plan.

Science blog posts/pages

So how would I summarize the progress that I made with my numerous different New Moon goals?  So I’ve managed to start losing weight and getting things back on track slowly in terms of nutrition and fitness. While I’ve only really finished one program this year (LIIFT4), I’ve managed to keep the weight on a more or less downwards trend. Nutrition could be better (the last two and half months has been rough and has seen me fallback on some bad habits), but all I’m really trying to do is be slightly better than yesterday. I’ve also been fairly good at getting my water in daily (though there are some days when I don’t quite hit the minimum goal).

I’m trying to get back into a routine of meditating nightly—though this is something that I find difficult to do when I’m traveling (either by myself or with other people & sharing a room). I’m hoping if I can get back into the nightly routine I can figure out how to make it work when I’m on the road.

I’ve made a small dent in my personal/professional development book list (though I think I’ve added more books to the list than I’ve finished so far this year). I am going to try to aim for finishing one book every seven to ten days (especially since I have a habit of going between two and four different personal/professional books at a time).

In terms of doing the different e-courses; this is a on-going struggle at times since it is all computer based. Also depending on the course, at times I find it difficult to pay attention to the voice of the instructor. But this is something that I’m going to work at getting better at over the next year.

In terms of my financial goals—I’m pretty good at trying to set budgets, and had a small track record going of not purchasing anything on campus (but fell out of that routine do to how terrible October had gone and I haven’t gotten back in the groove of things for that challenge). The monthly money logs vary (sometime I’m decent at keeping one, and other times I totally forget about doing it). I really should try to make an appointment with some financial person to talk about how to try to get either some savings invested in a short term CD and/or how to slowly start adding more to my retirement account.

In terms of the professional goals for the year—I’m still working on everything. I’m probably going at a slower rate than other people—but I’ve been burnt a couple of times already and I want to make sure that I’m on the correct path. I think that the areas that I need to try to spend the most on right now are: networking (adding value to connections), and trying to figure out what my “brand” is (both personal and professional). Though I have realized that I like sharing different science articles that span different areas of science, because I enjoy learning different things. That was one of the major issues I have with different aspects of science—how you’re suppose to become an “expert” in one or two areas and almost ignore everything else that is going on. I think I might just stick with being a more“generalist” with interest in say five or six different areas than trying to become “expert”.

As the year is winding down, it is time to start trying to develop a new plan for the New Year (and do more realistic breakdowns for the month/week/day), and aim for 2019 to be a much better year than 2018.