If you're a typical working artist, you've worked yourself into exhaustion trying to please everyone at least once in your life. If you're anything like me, it's a cycle you fall into every so often, where all of your generosity and energy is slowly sapped until you need to call in sick for a day just so you can pay attention to what YOU want for a change.

It is the symptom of a professional, understanding that in order serve the general public or even our bosses, we must do exactly that: serve. We make our money from our clients by giving them what they want. What do they want? Our services. It's right there in the term for what we provide. We serve with our services. And serving entails a lot of things, most specifically putting aside what we want or think is best in order to allow the client's ideas to take precedence. Many times, we simply become a tool for the client to use to accomplish a certain task, and this can be incredibly draining on our patience and sanity.

Refilling our tanks as artists, or "returning to shore" as I call it, involves a complete break in the cycle of endless service, and hopefully before it becomes an issue of exhaustion. And there is one key factor to remember in your life as an artist: YOU ARE NOT YOUR SERVICES. You are a human being who simply happens to have a marketable skill. And this, for many artists, is a life-altering realization.

Our skills are not us. They are something we do. And in this sense, we can simply "turn it off" whenever we need to, even if it's just for a lunch break.

The importance of "turning off" our skill or profession is far greater than we realize. First, we can't serve endlessly. It's just a fact of life. There's only so much attention we can give to a craft before we begin to forget who we are. I have learned the hard way that endless work equals endless headaches, simply because I've forgotten to appreciate that I have a life outside of what I do. If you've been through the same, you know all too well about losing sleep, thinking in calendar mode 24/7, considering clients before considering family, and all the rest.

Instead, every so often, the attention needs to be turned toward the source of all this work: yourself. Do not be ashamed to reschedule clients. Do not be ashamed to call in sick. Do not be ashamed to realize that you are human, and that you may unexpectedly need to disappear and go see a movie by yourself. You may need to spend a day at the book store in the art section like when you were a teenager. You may need to put on headphones and wander around downtown in the nearest city or even your hometown. You may need to say "To hell with clients, I'm going to go get a pizza and draw this morning." And you should encourage every bit of that.

It's not overly hedonistic or selfish to need a recharge or acknowledge that you have gotten yourself to where you are in life. Give yourself the credit you deserve. Give yourself the chance to relax and have the adventures you've earned.