How Much of Yourself This Should Take

Most jobs let you leave something at the door. This one is harder to put down, because what you are selling is partly attention, and attention comes out of the same supply you were going to spend on your own evening.

The people who struggle are rarely the ones who did not work hard enough. They are usually the ones who were generous without deciding to be. They replied at midnight because they were awake, then at midnight the next night because they had done it once, and within a month there was an expectation that nobody ever stated and that they now feel bad about breaking.

So decide in advance rather than in the moment. Pick the hours you answer messages and stick roughly to them. Pick how much conversation is part of an order and where it becomes something else. Pick what you do and do not talk about, not because anyone is prying, but because it is far easier to have a line than to invent one halfway through a chat you were enjoying.

None of that has to be cold, and it does not make the warmth false. A seller who is genuinely friendly for an hour is better company than one who is available all day and slowly resentful about it. Buyers can feel the difference and they usually feel it before you admit it to yourself.

The signs you are running low are consistent. Messages start to feel like a pile rather than people. You put off packing something you would normally enjoy. You reread a perfectly ordinary message looking for an insult in it. That last one is the reliable signal, and it means take a few days rather than push on.

Then take them without apologising for it. A shop that closes for a week every so often is a shop that is still open next year, and the sellers still here after two years are almost never the ones who gave the most in their first three months.