Valley PR Blog

Is PR hazardous to your health?

By Linda VandeVrede on August 11th, 2009 In Advice

Have you ever stopped to think how hazardous our occupation really is?

Granted, it’s not included in this odd list I found from the Connecticut Department of Labor:  “Occupations Designated as High Risk or Safety Sensitive.”  You’ll be pleased to know that a back piler operator, bus driver, chauffer (sic), and a propane service technician are among those listed as high risk. Public relations is nowhere to be found.

But if you have a lot of writing, tweeting and blogging in your day-to-day activities (and what PR person doesn’t?), please stop and listen.  For me, it all started when I was about 37. I noticed that sometimes at the end of the day my hands would ache a little bit. I played the piano very easily in my teens, but when I sat down to play a piano in my late 30s, my fingers felt really clumsy.  That’s odd, I thought. 

By early 40s it had worsened and I had to take breaks from all the typing. Admittedly, I was a typing machine. The IT guy at one of the startups I worked for came to me and said, “do you know that you send out and receive more e-mails than anyone else in this company?”  He was more amazed than anything else.

I was driven. Are you like that? Are you driven to succeed and exceed at public relations?  My friends and family all told me to slow down and I didn’t listen.  Then right around the end of 2004, after I had completed a bunch of extremely long documents for a California startup, I had what I can only call an attack. My hands were so numb that I couldn’t sleep at night from the pain, and I couldn’t open jars or do something simple like wash dishes.   I went to see a hand specialist and after several tests, he told me bluntly, “Change careers.”  

Change careers? What the heck was he talking about? Wasn’t there some sort of surgery that could help? Apparently not. The repetitive stress over years and years of typing had created what he called permanent tendinitis.  And in the last five years, I’ve had a slew of other physical challenges, all directly tied to the computer and the insatiable need to be productive.

In my 30s I felt as invincible as anyone can feel. When the first physical symptoms showed up, I shrugged them off. Don’t make my mistake. PR isn’t worth it. I can tell you that none of the bosses that I killed myself for, no matter how nice they were, was worth damaging my hands.

So what can you do?  Here’s what I’ve learned to do in the last five years:

1) purchase voice recognition software. I use Dragon Natural Speaking software. It is best used for long documents, and is very easy to learn. I use it for my blog posts (like this one) and e-mails.

2) get up and move around. Seriously. Try not to sit at your computer too long each time. It can cause all sorts of weird ailments, like degenerative arthritis in your neck, tendonitis, and piriformis syndrome.  Trust me, I know all this firsthand.

3) try to vary your workouts.  I alternate between yoga and cardio at the gym.  I’ll be the first to tell you that I do not look like poetry in motion when I do yoga poses, in fact I look something like a piece of rebar that was forcefully pushed into shape, but it is good for stretching muscles.  You don’t want to become one of those old people who can’t turn their head when they drive because their neck vertebrae have fused together.

4) keep perspective. Great as your clients are, and much as you might love the positive feedback when you score a coup for them, they are not worth sacrificing your health for. I never had bosses who drove me – it was always myself putting the pressure on to get more and more accomplished. I was my own worst enemy.

Does this describe you? As long as the propane service technician is still alive, I can guarantee you he or she is in much better physical shape than I am. Public relations should be on that Connecticut list!

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