Europeans have the right idea, on many counts, of how to balance work and life: two hour lunch/naps, late socializing with friends and family, 6 week summer vacations.
The best thing a fundraiser can do is vacate. Remove yourself from the minutiae. Step away from the Treo, the database, the donors beck and call. Kindly, respectfully, dimiss yourself from your work a day environment.
Maybe take a close donor/friend along, but only if you both promise NOT to talk business (believe me he/she will appreciate it too).
And while you’re gone don’t think about work. Don’t think about philanthropy. Do something completely different. Exercise the right or left side of your brain (which ever is less dominant in your philanthropy career). Listen to some old Grateful Dead, paint, walk on the beach. Drink Corona’s or sweating cold glasses of iced tea. Read some good fiction. Sit under the stars, watching the flames of a bonfire. In the quiet. Breathe.
Your program wil be so much richer for it when you return.