back to my southern roots

I’m not sure how many of you are still reading my blog as I have neglected it a little (well, a LOT). I decided it’s time for a little update. I have made a few changes in my life. Number one being, I no longer live in NYC, but have come back to the South and I’m living in Atlanta. This move can best be described as a “quality of life” decision. I missed almost everything about the South, and although I was sad to leave NYC and everything it has to offer, I’m so excited to start my new life in Atlanta.

Just like in NYC when I moved up from my small apartment in the Village to my ridiculously overpriced Murray Hill apartment, I have now moved up into an amazing house in the Morningside neighborhood. I love the house and especially my two roommates (good friends from college). I love having my car again and am looking forward many road trips to Auburn, visit friends and go home and see my family in Tenn.

I’m really enjoying life back in South and hopefully it will include enough spare time to blog a little more frequently.

Now even though this article was written in 2004, it really caught my eye. It’s really directed towards young, professional women, but if any of you men out there want to read it, go ahead.

I CAN DO ANYTHING, SO HOW DO I CHOOSE?

WITH COUNTLESS OPTIONS AND ALL THE FREEDOM I’LL EVER NEED, COMES THE PRESSURE TO FIND THE PERFECT LIFE.

So part of my trip to San Francisco last week was to train with our new blog monitoring service, BuzzLogic. Now I had heard how great the program was before we spoke with them, and this was only reinforced after our initial meeting with them, but I had NO idea how AMAZING the program was until Friday when I got to learn the ins and outs. The program is amazing, the employees are very helpful and polite and as you can tell, i’m super excited about BuzzLogic as a whole! If you are in need of a good blog monitoring service, please check them out!

 Ok, enough blogging for now, back to work….

I had the opportunity to attend the Eye for Travel Social Media Strategies for Travel 2008 Conference in San Francisco last week. Now this was not my first conference that Evins has sent me to, but it was the most significant. I went to San Francisco for 3 1/2 to attend this conference and do some other housekeeping (second blog post to follow). This was a tremendous responsibility for someone of my level and I’m honored they agreed to let me go. The conference was very successful! I learned so much about travel in social media, as well as meeting all the amazing people that I did. I know this was the first conference like that that Eye for Travel has done and I would completely recommend company to anyone who can attend something by them. They managed to get some very important and influential people to present and attend.  I have always understood the trends of social media for social media purposes, but it was a learning experience for me to see how it relates to the travel industry. I’m very interested to see how some of the new internet companies I saw at the conference will evolve. I’ll update on that and promise to keep up better with my PrBlog, I’m afraid to say it has beena bit neglected due to craziness in both my work and personal life. 

In the craziness that was the last few weeks before the Holidays, my blog was the thing that got the most neglected. Now it’s a new year and things are going to change regarding how often I post here.

This three day week was nice for getting back into the swing of things without being overwhelmed. I’m very excited about 2008. Things are good at work and NYC is still everything I expected it to be (most recently, VERY cold). I took a great eight day vacation to Northern CA to see my family, and spent a few days in the wine country (AMAZING). My first NYE in NYC was everything I expected it to be and i’m not afraid to admit I was looking forward to getting back to work.

 So my life is not that interesting to read about, and I promise these posts will become more about important topics than a livejournal, but I wanted a post for the New Year done by the end of this work week.

 I hope everyone had as great of a break as I did and is looking forward to what 2008 bring as much as I am!

A good portion of our office is out this week for Art Basel in Miami, Fl. I am familiar with Art Basel, but am enjoying to seeing it from a professional standpoint. In honor of Art Basel and for an event with one of our clients at the Vitra Showroom. It’s in honor of Maarten Van Severen and i’m very excited. The Vitra furniture is very modern and although it is Swiss, it SO New York.

I was supposed to leave at six, but now i’m headed over at five. I wanted to get a post in though! I’ll post again tomorrow on how it went!

 In case anyone really wants my thoughts from the big apple- it’s FREEZING outside!

I’m having one of my usual GChat conversations today and someone asks me if I watched the Today Show this morning? Well, of course I did. But did I watch when Matt Lauer called Foy? No, I definitely missed that. Of course, one of the amazing aspects of the internet is that you can pretty much find anything you want. I did find the link to the article where Foy was featured and the video. The piece was “5 Phone Numbers That Will Change Your Life” and Auburn’s Foy was number two.

Check it out. 

The Today Show’s “5 Phone Numbers That Will Change Your Life” Page

The Today Show’s  “5 Phone Numbers That Will Change Your Life” Video 

I’m struggling through this short day at work tomorrow with great anticipation to go home in a few hours. This first Thanksgiving that I am in the working world and after thinking about what I’m thankful for, I’m sure it’s very different from the things I used to be thankful for. So what am I thankful for this Thanksgiving?

1. My family (particularly my parents this time)
2. My friends (the real ones, the close ones- most likely not many of the people I would have been thankful for last year)
3. NYC (this is very broad, but includes: my job, my apt., my friends & my life here)
4. How lucky I am (to have a job, a loving family, to be able to travel and do the things I love)
5. Angel (I know it’s silly to be thankful for a dog, but I have been missing her a lot lately)

Maybe more will come, we will see. For a quick five minute blog post, this is what I’m thankful for right now. (I’ll also be really thankful if I get out on this 7 p.m. flight the day before Thanksgiving- wish me luck!). I hope everyone has a safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

I believe I was having a bit of a writing moment a few weeks ago and was inspired to write a post for Forward blog. I had always read the blog back in the days of Robert French’s class at Auburn (and really appreciated the advice), but am still in shock that I might now be a credible source to students these days.  Anyway, enough about that- the reality is I am a young, fresh out of college PR professional in NYC. Basically, my point is that EVERYONE (I know, haha) should go read my post on Forward and if you are a college student preparing to enter the world of PR, you should regularly be reading the blog and listening to the podcasts.