So the moon will be entering Aquarius either tonight or tomorrow night (depending on where you are in the world), and we’ll be having our second new moon of the year. I’m possibly going to be a day or so behind in various things for awhile—trying to get back on track after allowing the inner critic a couple of ‘battles’ this past month.

So before I look ahead to the Aquarius new moon, I should look back at the goals that I set for the Capricorn new moon and see how I did with each of them.

The goals for the Capricorn new moon included:

  1. Work on developing my vision of where I would like to be in 3-5 years in regards to remote/contract/online freelance writing/blogging. In the same note, write out very specific goals/milestones that will help me achieve the said vision
  2. Read at least one non-fiction book from my 2022 non-fiction book BINGO card
  3. Finish at least one module of a personal/professional development course from my 2022 e-course BINGO cad
  4. Start refreshing my Spanish again using the app Mondly
  5. Work on getting better at self compassion

So how did I do with each of them?

In terms of the 3-to-5 year plan—I’m still working on this. It isn’t so much the time frame, but also a combination of imposter syndrome/self-doubt, and writer’s block. It is slightly hard to figure out what I want to be doing freelance/remote/contract when I currently can’t drum up any enthusiasm for writing. This is something that I’m working on getting past.

I managed to read two books off the non-fiction bingo card:

Work Quilting by Vicki Walton

Girl, Take Back Your Career by Solange Lope

I’m also bouncing between a couple of other non-fiction books along with several fiction books.

I finished two short courses on Skill Share (and I may go back and watch them a couple of more times this year):

Productivity Basics: How to become more productive in 4 steps

Personal and Lifestyle Branding: Build Your Story

Neither course is on the 2022 e-course BINGO card, but I am slowly working through two of the courses:

Write Your Way to Freedom Course (course on becoming a freelance copywriter)

How to Work For Yourself (a course on Udemy)

I haven’t started refreshing my Spanish yet—again the imposter syndrome/inner critic ‘took’ over for about half the month.

In terms of self-compassion/self-love, I’m doing better. I’m working through various assignments for different groups and realizing that there are ‘issues’ that I have tried to ignore for the past few decades and I need to develop a plan for working through them.

My biggest ‘problem’ this month turned out to be being over-zealous in terms of what I would be getting accomplished. I’d mentally planned out a lot of work, but when it came time to start the work—I ‘decided’ to do something different instead and ended up not really doing anything.

Which is slightly funny—since I started the year with watching a productivity e-course, and I ended up procrastinating most of the month away.

So, I managed about three-quarters of the goals (as the only one I didn’t really do anything with was refreshing my Spanish)—so I’ll take that as a win to start the year.

Baby steps, small steps forward and a few steps backwards are all progress towards growth. Growth doesn’t happen in the comfort zone—which is why I’m going to try to focus more on stretching the comfort, bounce, and stretch zones, while working to shrink the risk and die zones.

How do you attempt to stretch your comfort and stretch zones, while attempting to shrink your risk and die zones?