I loved what you had to say and especially agree that you have to pick and choose what’s important to you. What social networks to be involved with etc.

What works best for me is scheduled time each day to do particular tasks. First, a 1/2 hour after breakfast, before chores and school to check my email and RSS, and approve comments on my blog. My goal is to leave one meaningful comment on one of the blogs I read. Something to help me connect to others bloggers and have them (and their readers) connect to me – like I’m doing right now.

After lunch I have a one hour “mamma’s writing and tea time”. My 9, 7 & 5 can keep themselves busy for this amount of time (not much longer though!). This is when I write blog content. I love to write and am always jotting down ideas in a notebook I keep so this is a very productive time. Most days I’ll also publish the post at this point but sometimes I work on posts for days, publishing little ones in between.

At night after I read to the kids and they are in bed at 8:30 I do everything else. I try to wrap up by 10pm, with varying degrees of success. Blog maintenance (links, look and feel stuff) or maybe more time consuming upgrades. Choosing from the days photos for future blogs and exporting those, sometimes editing photos. A little bit of social networking stuff. Mostly evening is more photo stuff. And also checking RSS one more time and leaving little comments on friends blogs and such.

Sometimes I have more time for the extras on weekends but I don’t count on it as that is family time.

My general rule though is to put time limits on things and work hard at getting the most I can accomplish in that time and not working till I “get it done”. It’s never done, just like the laundry.

Good luck and have fun balancing your new hobby with “real life”

When I did the great disconnect, I felt sure I would make it no more than 2 or 3 days. However, I’ve been sick plus planning a class reunion and it has been 2 weeks since I “logged out” of a few places.

I am in the process also of getting a new blog and social site up for my school district and I’m in a time crunch. But, I’ve already made up my mind, as soon as I get these 2 or 3 big things out of my way, I’m going straight to twitter for an entire day, lol!

I’m still struggling mightily with the balance issue. My daughter is a busy first-grader, I have a part-time “real” job, I need to exercise, keep up the house and last but not least spend time with my husband (oh yeah, him!). It’s hard!

If I had a laptop, I could be so much more productive. I told my husband I would just block out time and go somewhere with free wi-fi to write. Someday . . .