Determining Success can be a Challenge

I recently took a month or so off from WA and my website for personal reasons. A knee surgery, a new job, a couple weekends away, holidays. I also read a post from someone who was discouraged because there were so many "authority" websites that were the same type of content as his. This made me feel like there is no way I'm going to be able to do it either, since I was in the same niche.

I'm back now, and trying to find the motivation I had a couple months ago before being discouraged. My rank dropped like a rock, by site health also. Although I have a network of over 700, I feel like I lost touch with many that I kept up with often. But one thing that stands out as an obstacle for me back a couple months was where to put my effort.

What actually is success? Is it how many people here I help? Is it my ranking? My network? My website? I am still pretty new, and have taken a few breaks over the past 6 months, because life gets so busy, but I know I am a competitor, and several times I got caught up in trying to move my rank up.

Does rank really matter? It made me feel good to see myself get so close to the top 200 (at 11k now sadly) that I spent much of my time responding to people's posts, trying to give advice, welcoming new people. But in the end isn't it more important to put my efforts into my website? After all, that is what will eventually give me an income.

How do you balance everything? I would love anyone's advice, because without the balance I don't feel very successful in anything.