On Over-Ambition and Rebalancing

Photo credit: Mike Gabelmann

I'm an ambitious person. Always have been, for as long as I can remember.

I was the kid in class who always had to get As. Who wrote novels in math class (and still aced math tests), who took AP classes and was only satisfied with a 4 or 5 score on the test at the end of the year, who wanted, more than anything, to get published again, and again, and again.

So I guess it's not surprising I'm also the person who, in August, thought, yeah, I can do grad school, launch a book, and do thirty hours of part time work at the same time. It'll be fine.

Spoiler: it has not been fine.

As of this blog post, I'm nearly a month behind on Book 3 revisions. I've had to, on multiple occasions, not finish my readings for class. For the first time ever I had to e-mail a professor and ask for an extension on a paper. I have publishing deadlines this week I'll be diving into as soon as I finish this post. In short: October has been a tough month.

October was also the month I realized what I was doing wasn't sustainable and took action to lighten the load for me this month by cutting back on my part time hours. And though it was touch and go for a while, it does look like things will be fine after I get through another weekend plus week of overwork. All because I got a little (well, a lot) overly ambitious.

Ambition is great—it encourages you to dream big and push yourself to get there—but it can be a flaw if you're also a workaholic, like me. I learned that the hard way over the last two months, and it's a lesson I'm pretty sure I'll never forget. And while I'm feeling a little better knowing the light is at the end of the tunnel and soon I'll be able to breathe, I will fully admit it's been A Lot.

But I like to be honest about that, because sometimes you can give the impression online that you're a superhuman doing All The Things and everything is fine, fine, fine, and I don't want to give that impression because I've always found it comforting when authors I follow online say, "Yeah, this is hard."

So yeah, this is hard. But it's good, too. Though I've been overwhelmed, I've been overwhelmed with things I enjoy. And once I get a little better balanced, everything really will be fine.

Just got to push through until then.

Twitter-sized bite:

Author @Ava_Jae gets real about being overambitious and rebalancing. (Click to tweet)