The part nobody schedules
Rest is not what happens when the work runs out. It has to be booked like the work.
Self-employment removes the two things that used to enforce rest: a closing time and a colleague who notices. What replaces them has to be deliberate, because nothing about this work will stop you on its own.
The pattern PALMA sees repeatedly is not dramatic. It is a creator who has not had a full day off in five months, whose output is still good, and who is quietly certain that stopping would cost them everything. They are usually wrong about the second part, and by the time the work does drop off it takes far longer to recover than the break would have taken.
Some things that help, from people who have come out the other side.
Put days off in the calendar before you fill it. A day that is already booked is much harder to give away than a day that is merely empty.
Separate the accounts from the work. Doing your invoices at midnight after shooting is how a bad month starts to feel like a bad career. They are different jobs and they deserve different hours.
Have somebody outside the industry you talk to properly. Not for advice about the work, but so that your entire sense of how you are doing does not come from an audience.
Notice the early signs rather than the late ones: sleep going first, then appetite, then the thing you used to enjoy about the work feeling like admin.
If it has gone further than tiredness, that is a health matter and not a character flaw. A GP is a reasonable first call and so is any of the free listening services that operate around the clock. This industry has a higher-than-average share of people carrying things alone, and almost none of them needed to be.
The PALMA Journal is published by PALMA, The Creator Honours.