At the beginning of the school year I joined a team, Forensics (basically Speech), which has a dozen events such as Poetry Reading that people specialize and compete in. I'm focusing on Radio for now, and I wasn't expecting it to take so much of my time - 2.5 more hours at school from Tuesday to Thursday, preparing a script Friday, competing from 6 AM to 5:30 PM on Saturday. This is new to me! :3
and two, yeah? maybe? I mean, the core concepts carry over no matter what language you're using but C is probably both the closest to ASM you'll find, and the lingua franca of psuedocode. Having at least a basic understanding of programming concepts will help you make sense of things a lot easier. We need to be able to at least speak the same language to communicate effectively.
So if I were to make a recommendation then yes, take a break from the ASM. Read some beginner's C/C++, when I was starting out I carried a copy of Stroustroup's C++ book with me to work for months and tried to figure out a bit every day. You won't get anywhere by just bashing your head against it alone.