Yay, insomnia! The only time I can find to blog. I’m hoping this post will accomplish a couple of things: 1) Explaining to you, my small-but-super-loyal blog following where I’ve been and 2) applying a little balm to my chafed ego which is longing to spend more time blogging, but just can’t get there from here right now.  I started a new gig two-and-a-half months ago, as many of you know. I’m now VP of Account Management and Digital Strategy at Meyer and Wallis, a 42-years-young agency with offices in Milwaukee and Indianapolis. In a nutshell, this means I bear ultimate responsibility for all of our agency’s Milwaukee-office accounts, research, strategy, planning, and digital projects, in addition to a major role in new business efforts. Until now, I’ve had little or no empathy for people who use the “I just don’t have time to blog, tweet, insert other social media verb here.” excuse. Now, I totally get it. I still work in as much social as I can, but I recognize that I am barely scratching the surface of what I could, should, would like to be doing.  I should be blogging here at least three times a week, doing the same on our agency blog, tweeting for both a heck of a lot more than I am, and so on. I should be reading and commenting on more blogs. I should be a lot more active on Facebook and LinkedIn than I have been. I should be playing with Posterous, and a whole bunch of other tools. I finally managed to prioritize playing with FourSquare just this week. That Google Wave invite? Been sitting in my inbox for months. I feel like I could take a week off just to catch up on social media and digital experience reading at this point. And I definitely should be using/editing video (hence the new flip video camera that Santa will be bringing me this year).  But here’s the rub, folks. Social media is really fun, really educational, and really good for your ego, but…it’s still not real life. It’s sorta like real life, and obviously you can interact with people that are in your real life. But, the bigger question is: how many of you manage your life around your social media life, instead of the other way around?  I may permanently eliminate my chances of ever sitting at the cool kids table in the cafeteria for saying this, but if I have to make a choice at times between an hour with my kid or an hour blogging, there is no freaking contest. Go to yoga class three times a week to take halfway decent care of myself, or spend three more hours online? No contest. Take my son sledding not once, but twice, on Sunday, or catch up on reading? No contest.   Believe me, I am all about passion for what you do and going above and beyond to make it happen and all. I truly do admire the much-more-high-profile-than-I social media folks who seem to manage to find the time to do it all. But the ones I know well are also pretty exhausted and asking themselves: when is it enough?  When does life trump social media life? In my world, the answer is “Always“. Do what you can do. Push yourself, within reasonable boundaries. Find what works around your life, rather than making yourself crazy trying to cram tiny bits of life in around your demanding social media calendar.  What say you?