Know Your Limits? I Don’t Seem to Know Mine

What’s too much?

Its one thing to be ambitious and hard working, but that won’t help you with the fundamental fact that there are still only 24 hours in a day.  I’ve always been particularly bad at biting off more than I can chew, so I can kind of see how I ended up in this situation.

Of course there’s this blog.  There’s also one about helping students fund college expenses.  Oh yeah, there’s a personal one.  Two about politics (I’m not even sure how that happened.)  Even one about my strange wheat-free diet (food intolerance is serious stuff).

That’s just blogs, though.  There’s also two Pligg sites I should be moderating and/or promoting and a forum here on this very domain that badly needs some work.

The problem that got me into this mess is obvious:  Spending more money than I have!  I was a good frugal blogger for a while, but I totally blew it on a trip to Europe with my lady and I’ve recently found myself carrying a debt around for the first time since early in college.

With a bit of debt on hand and a terrible job market out there, I couldn’t comprehend saying “No” when I got an IM from someone offering work.  Hey, the pay is good, I can sit here and work from home, and I’ll have my trip paid off in no time.  I figured that in a month or two, I’d even have enough saved up to pay for the next trip to wherever.

Oh yeah, what about those eight websites I was already in the middle of working on?

The next six months to a year will probably be the most money I’ve ever earned in my life, and there’s a good chance that I’ll build a nice pile of cash while the economy crashes around me.  But how the heck am I supposed to find the time?

The contract comes out to almost six hours a day.  Basically, its a full time job and on its own it would more than pay my bills and eliminate the debt before Christmas.  In addition though, these websites are already providing just about enough income to pay my monthly bills.  So I don’t want to give up the websites at all, I’m just afraid that I might end up cutting in to the regularity of posts, promotions, and being able to get involved with conversations on other blogs I like to read.

As the reality of the situation has come in to focus, I’ve found the pressure even makes it harder to write.  So, in accordance with my own advice about writer’s block, I decided to start writing about why I couldn’t write.  And now I feel a good bit better and I’ve got a post just about finished.

But there’s still only 24 hours in the day… damnit…  As soon as I figure out what to do about that, I’ll let you know.  In the meantime, I might be sleeping and playing video games less than usual.  Until it starts cutting in to the time I spend with friends and loved ones I’ll find some slack time somewhere to make more productive.