Posted by on Nov 30, 2010 in My Business Adventures, Personal | 0 comments

I stumbled across an interesting article, “What does it mean to work hard” this evening. Pretty interesting read and especially poignant to my own situation. I’m running my own business, spending some of my week playing Mr Mom, teaching classes twice a week, etc.  It makes me feel very burnt out all the time even though there are times where it might seem like there are observable downtimes to my day.  With creative work…sometimes people don’t understand that every minute of the day feels like work. I can be eating dinner with family, staring at the TV…at yet half of my mind is still focused on the projects I have to do.

The only thing that truly takes me away from all of this and REALLY feels like downtime is when I’m either playing live music, or if I’m seated down behind a good video game. This is where my wife and I sometimes don’t see eye-to eye; she wonders why I might be playing a video game some late night…which to her means I’m burning away precious energy I could use the next day, or it means I’m not concentrating on my business. But what it really does is get my mind off of work so that I’m actually feeling refreshed afterward. I’m not sure she’ll ever get it.

I’m not sure I’m in a position to offer advice to any one of you out there with this feeling of exhaustion, since I’m dealing with it myself….but what this article suggests is probably worth some thought — just try some kind of hobby or passion that will completely remove your mind from your business and/or your other problems. It’s not enough just to sit there and try to do nothing…because what we do as graphic designers involves our mind 24 hours of the day.