I took a vacation this year.

When I went on my first vacation this year, it was after not having taken an actual break from my creative work since 2019. Yes, 2019. As in, pre-pandemic, not-even-in-this-decade, certifiably AGES ago.

And there are a lot of reasons for this – I mean, I’m self employed. If you’re ALSO self employed, especially as an artist, you’ll understand why that in itself is a reason. It’s NOT easy to turn your brain off when your productivity (even if it’s not like, 100% strictly work time = money) is a part of your income equation. Just like working for tips changes your behaviour… making your own way does too.

I can break it down in a ton of ways, and give myself a bunch of “excuses” for the whole thing. “I had a lot of work on,” or “We needed my income to pay for the visa process”. Which to be fair, are both true, and fair, and reasonable. When I defended myself to my UK colleagues, as a new immigrant, I explained that I was just working the way I’d always worked, and that maybe it was just “The American Way”. Unsurprisingly, the vacation I took in 2019 was ALSO the first break I’d taken in years – “stay-cations” just turned into “work-ations” because honestly? I didn’t know what else to do with myself – I’d landed in a rut. Both creatively, and otherwise.

My creativity had stagnated.

The rut showed – and not in ways I’m super proud of, if I’m honest. My style stagnated, and everything I created felt… formulaic. But let’s be clear – I didn’t notice that at the time, I just noticed that something felt… wrong. I couldn’t get into the right headspace to make new things I loved, and all of the creative efforts I was making were against a brief. They were for clients, or a company, or a project. Not for ME. Not for MY OWN creative fulfillment.

And that’s something I think all creatives can relate to – especially those of us who turn creativity into our job. I’m not here today to talk about how toxic the capitalist approach to creativity is, or how damaging it is to look at everything creative that brings joy and say “you could sell that!” Obviously I think it’s problematic, because it is, but practically speaking the more important aspect of it in this moment for me, was experiential, not theoretical. I wasn’t experiencing joy from my creative efforts anymore, because they didn’t feel truly creative, they felt… blah.

I thought I could change my perspective without a break…

So in my own personal favourite approach to solving problems, I continued trying to smash a round peg into a square hole. In truth I wasn’t even really thinking about it, it wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t entirely automatic either, I just… wasn’t really considering the active means of solving the problem. Deep down I knew I was falling into old patterns, from back when I tried to find the solution to burnout by layering even more work onto the existing work, and avoiding the ACTUAL problem. I mean, it’s even obvious in that sentence, right? If something is broken you can slap duct tape on it, and then when it gets all loose and wonky you can paste more over it. But that’s not a strategy that’s going to be long-term, if you don’t even attempt fixing the actual problem – repairing that break.

So for an amount of time measured in years, I kept at it. Any day I took off was a sick day, because I just… couldn’t make myself take a day off for pleasure. For joy. To rejuvenate my own creative perspective. And that’s where I was going wrong.

I was SO nervous for my first break.

And that brings us to this summer. It had been years – since pre-pandemic-era – since my partner had been to Portugal to see his family. It used to be something he did twice a year, every year, because he’s very close with his family members. But while we were going through the visa process, and while everyone globally was dealing with Covid, the trips stopped. We had one booked for 2023, but we both got Covid. Then we had one planned for 2024, and another family emergency cancelled it for us, with no other option available than just rescheduling.

So finally, this summer, in 2025, we made it to Portugal. And to say I was nervous about taking a break from work is… not an honest representation of my feelings. I was SHITTING myself over it. Not because I’d stop making money, and not because I wasn’t prepared for a break – but because I’d gotten so rooted into just constantly working, I truly didn’t know what I’d do with myself if I didn’t have some brief to meet, or a project to work on. After so many years of waking up, sitting at my desk, sleeping, rinse, repeat – it sounds so strange to say, but even the IDEA of sitting at a table and doing something that wasn’t work, or lounging on the sofa… it sounded mad. I just couldn’t parse what the experience would be like. But I had no choice, at the end of the day. We were going, I wasn’t going to be working, and I prepped all of my clients to know I was going on a vacation and wasn’t going to be at my desk. All of my stopgaps were in place, including someone on standby to handle anything urgent while I was gone.

I’d prepared everything logistically, but I couldn’t prepare my nervous system.

I felt unable to prepare myself

When I say I “couldn’t” prepare my nervous system, I don’t mean that I couldn’t do it, from a process standpoint. I could’ve. It would have been relatively simple – but not easy. And there’s a big difference between those two things.

Every day in the lead up to the trip I thought to myself “maybe I should just go sit in silence for a minute” – and get myself ready for the uncomfortable. Or even make the uncomfortable more familiar. Simple. Just, get up, walk to another room, away from my desk, and sit. Think. Breathe. Observe. Go for a walk – look at the leaves. Feel my breath. Smile at a stranger.

I don’t know whether you relate to this, but that felt legitimately impossible in the face of my own stagnation. This is complicated further by executive dysfunction – as a person with ADHD and autism, I struggle pretty massively to move from one task to another, or from one mode of thinking to another. Switching from “work mode” to “rest mode” in a single day seemed impossible when I was thinking about them as separate things. A day was either a work day, or a rest day… except NO day was a rest day, because that felt like choosing failure. It’s like I was in a roller-coaster car, that needed a boost to get started – but I was strapped into the seat, and couldn’t push the thing forward from within the system.

The power of taking a break

But here’s the thing. That roller-coaster-car? I didn’t know it at the time, but it was pretty much my own comfy, predictable environment. And to push the car forward, from outside the system? I had to get OUT of that environment. It’s not groundbreaking – I mean, it’s literally one of the top recommendations for revitalising creative energy. Change your environment. Go to a park. Do something new, something different.

But in my rut, actually CHOOSING that felt impossible. So the vacation we’d planned, was effectively a forced version of that choice. I had no other option, I HAD to get out of the comfy cosy environment, where I knew what I’d feel (overwhelm) and knew what the experience would look like day to day (sitting at my desk).

And when we actually DID it, when we got there, and had the trip, and I didn’t work, I experienced (not for the first time in my life, admittedly) the power of taking a break. I started looking at the world like an artist again, because I had things in the world to actually observe. As much as I love my house, there’s not really much to see there, that I haven’t already seen a million times. And I can absolutely look at those things as an artist, but at a certain point, you HAVE to disrupt the system to bring yourself new and interesting perspectives.

So while we were away, I started thinking more powerfully as an artist again – I spent time sketching for FUN, not for work. I designed a tattoo for myself, then had it done. And when I was thinking, in those silent moments in the house with my partners family, I ended up gravitating to new and different ways to think about my work – because I WANTED to, not because I felt like I had to.

I’m honestly excited to be back to creating, and it’s all because of the break.

Taking that break made a world of difference in my life, and ultimately, it brought me back to a truth that I knew, but hadn’t been living out. For me to be my best creative self, I need novelty. Having rediscovered this fact about myself, I’m working on how to bring it into my life more intentionally, and keep myself out of the rut that the forced break dragged me out of, kicking and screaming.

My work feels fresh and new now – and I want to keep it that way.

So what’s the point? If you’re in a rut, and it feels IMPOSSIBLE to make change, force it. Force yourself out of that comfy cosy pattern. Schedule something you’ll be accountable to actually doing. Book yourself dinner (even if it’s alone – actually, scratch that, ESPECIALLY alone!) with a reservation you’ll feel pressured to actually go to. If you need it to be something free, schedule a time to meet a friend in a park. If you need it to be free and not involve someone in person, pick an accountability partner in your life who you’ll feel beholden to, and promise them you’re going to go to a park or on a walk, then check in with them after. While I don’t recommend using shame or pressure like that as a long-term motivator, in the short term, to get the ball rolling… it can actually be a superpower.

Disrupt your existing systems – and… take a break. Even a small one. It’ll change the way your artists’ brain thinks, and get you back to loving your work, even if it’s slowly, even if it’s over time.