I'm realizing that the more effort I put in to one thing, the less effort I have to put in to other activities. This may seem incredibly obvious, but I didn't fully realize how true it was until these past few months. Seeing band practice start to drop off my list of extracurricular activities was hard. I had to choose between doing a few things well and doing more things not-as-well, and made my decision to do bbyo, school. and robotics really well. And as difficult as it was to make, I do realize that this was the right decision.

Last year I wrote my SHARP about why wars of conquest never win: the leader always gets greedy and bites of more than he can chew. My argument was simply that power makes potential world conquerors try to grow too big too fast, and consequently collapse. Looking back, I realize that if I had kept up all of the extracurriculars that I started or spent time on, I would collapse. I would have had no time to do any of them well, and would be overwhelmed and defeated. Just like Napoleon and conquering Russia, I need to wait to focus on band practice until I'm not as busy. If Napoleon had simply waited until he was finished with Europe and winter was over, he could have focused his efforts on Russia and taken it by storm. I want to learn from Napoleon's mistakes and wait to take Russia. That way, I can lead a successful, happy high school life and not have to be banished to small unimportant islands.

Hopefully someday making music will become a large part of my life again, but until then I'm afraid that it's just going to have to take a backseat to other hobbies.