For the last four or five months of 2006, I was living far out of balance. The effects on my health, happiness and those around me were manifold, and it took taking two weeks off to make me realize just how bad I'd let things get.

It all began nobly enough. My better half and I decided that we simply had to get our credit cards and other debt paid off so that we could begin moving forward with our other life plans. She picked up some extra work and I hung out my freelance-writing shingle in a big way.

The work began to pour in. Over the years, I've managed to build a fairly good reputation with my clients, and they refer me around. Very quickly, I had more work than I could handle with more being offered.

I jumped in with both feet, spending every spare minute churning out copy, editing Web sites and doing dozens of other jobs, large and small, trying to bore a hole in the pile of debt under which we found ourselves. Every check I collected went straight to debt, and I started making progress. I could start to see the end of the tunnel, and was fairly sure the light I saw wasn't a train.

In the process, much of the rest of my life went in the toilet. The yard fell into disrepair, my household projects collected dust, and I went to the gym twice in four months. I wanted to go more often, but I begrudged any time not spent doing something that generated income. I'd become so focused on making money that everything else took a back seat. In short, I was desperately out of balance. I think it's a situation many of you have encountered.

Over the holidays, I took two weeks off. I told all my freelance clients that I would be out of town and unavailable for work, and headed off to Houston to take our son to see both sets of grandparents. For the first time in months, I went for a full day without sitting in front of a computer. I burned yard trash at my dad's house, went to a late movie, slept in and just generally got back in touch with life outside the wage stream. We returned home on New Year's Day, and I spent the rest of that week working around the house and setting things to rights.

Monday came and I was back to my regular job here in the friendly confines of the Food section. I got back on the freelance wagon, too, but the previous two weeks had helped me make my one New Year's resolution: to find and keep balance in my life.

In October, November and December of 2006, I would get off work at 2 p.m., then spend the two hours before going to pick up my son working on freelance projects. Now, I leave the house an hour earlier and go to the gym. Two days a week, I hit the yard and work on completing the myriad projects that await my attention (and back muscles).

The holidays are an easy time for all of us to get out of balance, and to be honest it's the lazy way out many times. It's a lot easier for me to stay parked here in my comfy Aeron chair with my space heater running than it is to put on my grubbies and get out in the yard. It's a lot easier to sit in front of my computer than to go to the gym and work up a sweat.

It was a very dangerous commingling of my latent workaholism and my incredible ability to find ways to avoid working out. I could justify my indolence by saying, "Hey, I'm working, not playing games! I'm making money!"

All the money in the world isn't going to do me one damned bit of good if I drop dead at 40. It's that simple. Balance is not just a matter of desire, it's a matter of necessity. Staying out of balance isn't healthy mentally or physically. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy ... and Scott a fatter one.

If you want to get back in balance, let me warn you about one thing: You're going to feel selfish. You're going to feel that way because part of the process is putting yourself back on your list of priorities. That hour or half-hour you spend exercising is going to have to come from somewhere. Maybe you'll give up an hour of TV in the evening. Maybe you'll leave the kids at day care an extra hour. Maybe you'll get up a little earlier in the morning. However you do it, you're going to have to carve out the time.

Need help? Just drop me a line, and maybe I can give you a hand.