Oh man, Jared. I get burnt out every 30 months or so. At least, that's been the trend of my career. Everything blows up (here are a few examples form my career: big job ends in a lawsuit, startup shuts down, editorial illustration work evaporates) and I contemplate going back to school for dentistry or accounting or anthropology or becoming a barista. I always said I'd rather be a happy barista than a sad designer.
My temperament has stabilized the past few years, but I'm still trying to figure out how to navigate my own design business. I don't think it's so much balancing work and life, but rather trying to make work fit inside of life and enhance it. Taking more time off has helped. Working on fewer projects at once has helped. Selling days of work to my clients instead of project-based rates has helped, because I can wake up and know what I'm doing the whole day. A deep breath helps, and acknowledging that you can change the things you don't like. That's the barista thing—you can nuke it all, start over, and still be you. You probably won't walk away, but just acknowledging it as an option brings a little bit of comfort.
But really, most of the time when I'm burnt out I need to eat better, exercise more, and take my vitamins. So you can only neglect the physical elements for so long until it trickles down into your thinking. The mind is inside the body; it took me 30 years to learn that because I am a total moron.
Oh man, Jared. I get burnt out every 30 months or so. At least, that's been the trend of my career. Everything blows up (here are a few examples form my career: big job ends in a lawsuit, startup shuts down, editorial illustration work evaporates) and I contemplate going back to school for dentistry or accounting or anthropology or becoming a barista. I always said I'd rather be a happy barista than a sad designer.
My temperament has stabilized the past few years, but I'm still trying to figure out how to navigate my own design business. I don't think it's so much balancing work and life, but rather trying to make work fit inside of life and enhance it. Taking more time off has helped. Working on fewer projects at once has helped. Selling days of work to my clients instead of project-based rates has helped, because I can wake up and know what I'm doing the whole day. A deep breath helps, and acknowledging that you can change the things you don't like. That's the barista thing—you can nuke it all, start over, and still be you. You probably won't walk away, but just acknowledging it as an option brings a little bit of comfort.
But really, most of the time when I'm burnt out I need to eat better, exercise more, and take my vitamins. So you can only neglect the physical elements for so long until it trickles down into your thinking. The mind is inside the body; it took me 30 years to learn that because I am a total moron.