First, you have to be interested enough to spend the time. This is true if any endeavor that pays back joy for discipline: drawing, playing guitar, taking pictures, dancing, singing, tennis, gardening. It has to engage you. Everyone has something that sometimes feels as though you’re pushing a rock up a hill but still makes you happier than anything else does. If you haven’t found it in escorting yet, it’s time to start looking for something else.
Then, routines help: you show up, and make the time spent be the requirement rather than how much you get done. You just have to be there, at the cocktail bar or restaurant table. But that means being there mentally as well as physically. When I’m escorting, I don’t check my phone unless in the restroom or on a break from my client (even when with clients who do so nonstop), so that my impatient brain can’t search out distractions and avoid the pain of figuring out the next sentence of how to continue to appear happy and perky. I’m being paid, and I am a better escort when I try to focus.
Sometimes you get to close to your clients or your marketing or your policies; after a while, you can’t see the goals you’re chasing, and you need to take a fresh look. Step away; go do something else, take some time off from escorting, and come back when your brain is clearer and your mood is better. Even when with a client, feel free to take a walk or a shower, and get your mind out of a rut. Check in with the people you love, and if you’re struggling too much, consider a change of client or a different form of escorting (there are lots of ways to work).
Escorting will always be there, waiting when you’re ready to jump back in. It’s a pool into which you can always slip, and into which you can swim happily when things are done right.