Glass Half Full: Chapter 2
A former drinks PR’s optimistic guide to life after redundancy

No. of times BlackBerry left unchecked for five minutes: there were one or two, I think
Shoes purchased: none, honest
Probability of conctacts lunched this week giving me any work: slim, I’d say
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Reading the supportive posts to last week’s blog was a warming experience – and given the temperature in my too-expensive-to-heat home office, warmth is a good thing. Though for future reference, anyone asking whether I have a husband should also submit a recent photograph and pay slip.

Into Week 4 of my post-redundancy life, things are beginning to make sense. Like the direct relationship between hours spent shopping on-line, running errands and doing the crossword and the absence of any real work at the Shiel Communications nerve centre. Work displacement insinuates its way into your diary and good intentions, precisely because you can just about persuade yourself that it’s good use of time to go to the supermarket/dry cleaners/gym when they’re queue-free and catch up with work later. Which is, of course, b****cks and you’ll spend your evenings watching Little Dorritt (if you can locate it in the schedule) just like everyone who’s done a full day’s grind.

Life certainly has a ‘honeymoon-is-over’ feel about it now. I thought it was fair enough to take it easy for a couple of weeks after the job ended, but now I have to do some serious thinking about my next move. I think I’ve done well on the networking front, but, while it’s great to be invited to a press launch here or an industry dinner there, I’m starting to re-evaluate their worth as a way to win that elusive contract. It is of course good to get out of the house and meet people, but going to events takes time that I could be spending on a more hard-nosed drive for business. In the time it takes me to go to lunch in London, I could probably make 15 sales calls. Or complete my sadly neglected website. Or be really grown-up and write a business plan.

I know it’s not uncommon to have demands on your time, but, ironically, being unemployed seems to be adding to those time pressures. For one, the money will, of course, run out sooner or later (sooner, probably) and for another, I know that the longer you’re out of work, the longer you’ll stay out of work. It’ feels like it’s time to take proper stock of my options and stop being quite so optimistic.

That said, my words last week about referrals have proved prescient. No sooner had I posted them than the call came from a friend of an ex-colleague who’d been left in the lurch when her current PR went into early labour. I stepped into the breach, a bit like a cash buyer in a broken property chain. With, happily, a similar ability to negotiate on price.

So I’ve done a day’s paid work with a promise of more to follow. And it wasn’t just about replenishing the shoe fund, it also reminded me of how much I like doing PR and, importantly, made me more disciplined on the other days. You know, fully dressed way before lunchtime, only watching one Australian soap a day. It’s surely just a matter of time before such focus is rewarded.


Ros Shiel was public relations manager for Beautiful Beer, a campaign funded by the UK’s brewers and pub companies to improve the image of beer. She was made redundant last October after funding for the project was cut and is now working as a freelance PR consultant and copywriter. Ros lives in Horsham and spends her free time running round the park, writing blogs and drinking beer in as many local pubs as she can justify visiting in the name of research.

http://www.shielcomms.co.uk/