I overdid it

We all do it sometimes.  We bite off more than we can chew.  I did it, and now I'm making the adjustments to get my life back to a manageable level.  So it got me thinking, how do you know when you go from "enough" to "too much?"  How do you decide not only when it's time to cut back, but also what you need to cut back?

I overextended myself this year.  I was extremely ambitious when I started the year.  I was taking guitar classes twice a week.  I decided to volunteer one day a week at the food bank.  I started this blog.  I signed up for my first triathlon.  And, of course, I still had a company to run.

I thought I was keeping it together pretty well.  I was wrong.  One of the great things about having a healthy relationship is that your partner can constructively tell you when you're doing something wrong.  Leah pointed out to me that I had not been affectionate with her, and that I had not really paid much attention to her for the past couple months.  In looking back, I realized that she was right.  But while I was in the middle of it, I was so focused on everything that I was doing, I didn't realize the affect it was having on her.  I can only assume that it had the same affect on the girls.

I decided to take a hiatus from guitar class.  I took a break for a couple weeks from the blog, and I think that I'll scale back from six posts a week to three.  The hard part is lowering my mental intensity level surrounding the triathlon.  I still need to train, but I need to find a place mentally where I can remain at the same level of commitment, but not stress out about it.

Everything that I was doing was positive, healthy stuff.  But all of it put together turned into something negative, and mentally unhealthy.  I think that is where the lesson lies.  Even if everything you're doing is positive, doing too much of it can become something negative.

I will be more careful when I add to my schedule.  It makes more sense to only add one new thing at a time, then adjust your life to that before adding anything else.  I learned my lesson, I think.