In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake wrote “you never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.”

I think this is unfortunately true.

I have too much on my plate right now.

And most of it makes me money or is part of a future plan to continue making money so deciding what has to go is… stressing me the heck out.

To be fair, it’s a fortunate problem to have but I about had a nervous breakdown last week after a production meeting and it took me several days to figure out why.

I am in the home stretch of my PhD applications. I need to finalize who I’m asking for references, do a few interviews, finalize a draft of a longer proposal one of the school’s requires and then pretty much hit submit and wait. But it is a crunch right now to get some stuff done, including some research-y stuff that is kind of hard to do without good access to a research library. And I’m a bit stressed about the references.

I am in the final semester of the accounting degree I’ve been plodding along towards for the last three years. It is also the most classes I’ve taken at once during this project to just get the thing done before (hopefully) going back to school full time for the PhD.

My freelance digital event producing job, which is a key part of the paying for living expenses during the PhD plan, has kind of exploded and there is just tons and tons of work. Great for my bank account, less great for my free time.

The digital murder mystery company keeps reorganizing how they schedule us but currently have me on as a regular 5 nights a week for two hours each night.

And the show I’m going to stage manage & production manage for towards the end of the fall has weekly production meetings and preproduction paperwork that is taking up a lot more time than my boss initially indicated it would.

Something has to go.

And I know what it is. It’s the murder mysteries. Freeing up my evenings would be ideal.

I’m just being… cheap. And paranoid about money.

See, the murder mystery/digital event producing were literally perfect from like January until June… when the world started to reopen and the weather was nice and I suddenly found myself chained to a computer for hours every single day instead of happily occupied at a computer, getting paid, when there was nothing better to do.

However, I’m hyper-aware that the bigger nest egg I can build up before moving to England, the better.

But when is enough, enough? When do you pick quality of life over money? And why is that so hard to do?

The murder mysteries don’t even make that much money. I mean, it’s been several thousand dollars over the last eight months but it’s solidly in side hustle territory. The main thing it has going for it is that most nights it’s mindless babysitting and I can just do homework during it.

But for that “paid” homework time, I’m sacrificing pretty much any free time to do anything with friends since the only nights of week I don’t work are Mondays and Tuesdays. Not most people’s prime time to hang out.

I’m leaning towards putting in my notice by the end of September, even though I kind of know I should do it like right now.

I think as an arts freelancer, I’m so conditioned to the idea that if there is money available to be made, I should do it, because who knows when or if there will be a next contract.

I suspect the pandemic has done nothing but amplify that already existing mentality.

How do you know when it’s time to let something go?