The world of public relations is a very exciting one to be in. Something new happens every day and it very rarely is boring. It might be annoying, downright crazy, disappointing or fun, but bored is not a feeling you are likely to run across as a PR pro.

Of its many paradoxes, one that has always intrigued me concerns PR being or not something personal. If you think about it, a good PR pro is a person that gets involved all the way in the campaigns they run. They have to know the products or services they promote, they have to love them and they have to really put their soul into what they do. If they don’t get involved, it shows in the words they pick, in their nonverbal communication, in their inability to relate. So PR is a very personal affair. 

On the other hand, in order to keep your sanity, you have to remind yourself that a lot of the things that happen to you as a PR professional are not personal. It’s nothing personal and explicitly directed at you when a journalist overlooks your story for a far less interesting one from a bigger company, no matter how good your pitch has been. It’s nothing personal when people call a PR fail something that a client did by disregarding your advice. It’s nothing personal when you get an amazing story published and the only clients who comment are those with a problem with the company the story is about. It’s nothing personal when clients get enthusiastic about PR, then decide it’s too expensive and it actually takes time to get results (regardless of how you explained this very points right from the start).

So in order to be a success in this profession, you have to be able to be all heart and then say to yourself: “Hey, it’s nothing personal!” Easy to say, hard to accomplish. At least in the first wave a reaction, we take what we shouldn’t very personally. The disappointment and sometimes hurt is quite real. So if you cannot completely become impersonal when you need to, find a secluded spot, give yourself a couple of minutes to recover, and then look in a mirror and say: “It’s nothing personal!” although for you it is.

What are your personal experiences? What do you consider being personal, directed at you, and when can you be detached and see things as something that has nothing to do with you? How do you cope and how do you keep yourself motivated?

2009 has been a year of many changes. It’s been a year of accomplishments and joy, as well as the year when a lot didn’t go according to plan, in both personal and business life. I would have wanted to skip the 2009 review and go straight to my 2010 plans. But that would have meant skipping some important steps of the process and make it less effective. So what happened in 2009?

On Words of a Broken Mirror, it’s been a year full of significant posts and essential lessons. I didn’t exactly meet my own plans of posting frequency, but I am extremely pleased with the quality of everything published here, as well as that of the guest posts I have written for other blogs.

2009 was also the year when I went from part time to full time business owner. Mirror Communications kept growing, I continued to work with IT companies and tackled other fields as well. I switched from spending part of my day in a client’s office to working fully on my own. This of course came with some organization and time management issues. It’s still fairly new but I’m getting better at it every day.

In what my PR and Marketing agency is concerned, there’s much work ahead. But I have had the opportunity to try a lot of things together with my clients and the results made us all very happy. We are currently plotting and planning what to do in 2009 It hasn’t been an easy ride, but it’s been challenging and inspiring and I am sure it’s been a very good decision, career wise, to start my own business.

In late August, together with two friends of mine, I have launched an online magazine for women, Cenusa de trandafir. It will turn 4 months on Christmas and it already has quite some traffic, good ranks and my personal reasons for happiness and excitement – over 1000 comments already, daily conversations with our readers on Twitter, many guest authors of which some became permanent authors! Compared to our competitors, we’re doing great at building a community around the magazine. The future holds a complete redesign and a lot more work from the entire team

I kept planning all year to revive my travel blog. It took me a while, but in November I again started posting frequently on Travel Spells! Better later than never, as the saying goes

I also started writing a book in 2009. As I have mentioned before it’s a vampire story. A few close friends (including Joanna Young whom I haven’t thanked enough for all her help and support) have read what I have written and their positive feedback fueled my desire to keep going. I was planning to release the book in December, but things got a bit delayed.

The personal part of 2009 has definitely been a wild ride. Yet I am happy and thankful for everything that has happened! Life sometimes makes us the most wonderful surprises ever!  And based on how I feel in the month of December, I can honestly say 2010 will be an amazing year on all levels