Tomorrow I’ll be boarding a plane for Delhi and I won’t be connected to the Inter-world (other than to send friends and family emails, and you if you want them!) and so this will be my last blog post and tweet until September.

If anyone wants to meet up, get in touch or have me send photos and worldly experienced stories (!), you know how to get in touch.

I hope that you all have a wonderful summer and I look forwards to boring you all with stories and photos when I get back!

Don’t you, forget about me!!!

I love reading these, but it’ll probably be a few years before I’m important enough to have my own in The Guardian’s Media Monday. So I thought I’d write one now and give you all an exclusive for the future…

Newspapers

Obviously my daily consumption of newspapers is pretty heavy because of monitoring and clipping, so enjoying the papers is something saved for the weekend. I get The Guardian on Saturday and sometimes the Indie too, and I love to get the Observer Music Monthly. If I’m having a funny day I might by a tabloid for a few laughs, but it’s pretty rare that I stray from my Grauniad.

Magazines

I tend to have phases of buying different types of magazines. It really depends on what mood I’m in and what I’m up to that month. Generally speaking I only regularly read PR Week, but if I catch sight of a feature or interview I’m interested in, I’ll read anything.

Books

Books are an absolute obsession. I studied English Literature at university and found some excellent antique bookshops where I found leather-bound classics for 50p each - I spend around £100, so now I have an admirable collection! I’m currently halfway through The Black Swan and I’ve decided that Umberto Eco’s theory of unread books is something I’m naturally adhering to! I’m also halfway through Flat Earth News, 1984 and PR! A Social History of Spin. I never used to be able to read more than one book at a time but starting in PR has given me a lot of primary reading to catch up on and I’m still reading (and incidentally adding to) my list of books that I need to read before I’m 30 (you can email me for the whole list).

TV

I don’t really have a regular schedule of programs, so I love to watch things on the interweb (I would give a link at this point, but it would be a bit naughty!). I love Peep Show, Family Guy, Black Books (RIP), Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Mock the Week and any documentaries that are on something that currently interests me (which is currently the Detroit music scene).

Radio

It’s rare that I get the chance to listen to the radio and when I drive into work I usually listen to a CD. When I get chance though, I’ll use the Radio One website to catch up with Zane Lowe and I do enjoy Radio Two on Saturday morning… I really should listen to more radio.

Ads

I like adverts that either polarise opinion or are quirky. So the new Glass and A Half Full adverts are great, as are the irritating adverts that stick in my head day to day. I’m also (obviously) a huge fan of adverts that encompass a variety of platforms - the ‘Get Some Nuts‘ is a probably the first example to come to mind. I honestly believe that for advertising to work it either has to be ridiculously focused (Facebook Social Ads) or multi-platform to reach a variety of demographics.

New Media

New media is integral to pretty much everything I do! I syndicate, blog, Google, Wiki, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Tweet, YouTube and probably a hundred other things that have become habit since beginning in PR…

So, three days into my extended leave and I’m still not relaxed. I still check my email obsessively, I read every paper every morning and I’m still looking for ways into the editorial pockets - but that’s enough about that. This is the rebirth.

I’m expecting my day of disconnection will probably fall in parallel with arriving into a dawning New Delhi.

Hopefully you’ll now all be intrigued as to these plans and you’ll have forgotten that this is a personal post rather than a professional post… I wont make a habit of it, I promise.

So, to ‘the plan’…

• India
• Thailand
• Cambodia
• Vietnam
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Fiji
• America (LA, San Diego, Vegas, NYC)

If any of you are around those places between now and September, give me a shout and you can buy me a beer!

If any of you would like to be included on my mailing list, get in touch and I’ll keep you updated with pictures and stories!

I’m not sure where I’ll be working in September, but I’ve had some interesting conversations and I’ll be sure to keep you informed as to my whereabouts.

If I don’t see you before, I’ll see you in September.

It’s officially my last day in work, drinking my last coffee and writing my last ‘from work’ post. I feel quite odd (and incidentally, old).

The last few days have been spent explaining what I actually do to make headlines and boost bottom lines and handing over current and potential leads to our MD so he can monitor everything and respond to any enquiries.

It’s handing things over that feels the strangest. I’m a self-confessed control freak over external messaging and to hand everything over and know it’s going to be handled in a particularly lo-fi way is very strange.

This role and the exterior messages I’ve been building have been like my baby. I remember the first telephone interview (with the wonderful Nicola Woolcock!) and thinking ‘This is horrible’ and then my last telephone interview thinking ‘I cant wait to go for that drink!’. Being the lone PRO, I’ve been given the opportunities to dictate the whole image of the company, and now I’m worried that someone else might morph that image and lead it towards the bad end of town! It’s given me the skills and knowledge to know how to win friends and influence people… That was a joke, by the way!

Trying to hand things over has been difficult too. I’ve had to quantify daily tasks and write down my thought process when finding angles to make things newsworthy - apparently I have a very skewed sense of logic! It’s only really been these last few weeks that I’ve realised that I’ve begun to think in a PR way.

(This part is quite heavily influenced by Paull Young’s post!)

So much has changed in six months. I’ve never been the child (or adult) who knew what job they wanted to do. I’ve just always loved writing and making friends.

I never meant to become a PRO, it just happened!

I’m done now.

Excuse my awkward emotion, I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to feel.

I’ll have to update my bloody ‘About Me‘ page now too…