Week two – Look back to look forward!

Me with long hair in my past "rock and roll life"

As the second week of 2014 comes to a close, we can already look back at 10 days of a new year!

Sounds melodramatic but one thing is for sure, time waits for no one and the next minute you know we are already shopping for Christmas presents for 2014!

We should not take time lightly and as I have written before in previous blogs, time is a very important commodity we all posses but we need to use it wisely in order to look back and think, “that was time well spent”

And I got thinking about time not because of the last 10 days I’ve already lived in 2014 (though they have already been eventful!) but because through the amazing power of social media and the Internet I was able to spark something magical related to time, something that allowed me to look back in my history and past times.

Most of you who use social media as a vehicle to share experiences, thoughts and feelings with those in our lives would confirm that through this platform we have rekindle with various people from our past. People that perhaps without the support of the Internet, we may have never seen or speak to again in our lives.

For several years I have been doing this very same thing, and since I got hooked onto Facebook I have contacted many friends and family members I had not seen or heard from in years. Being a “foreigner” in my country of residence means I have met hundreds of people who like me, came from other parts of the world to live and work here. Many of those went back to their countries (unlike me who came for 3 months and 28 years later I’m still here!) and we lost touch. I also lost connection with many family members as they were all so far away and I was, believe it or not, lazy to write to them! I blame it on being young! Nevertheless, without social media and the Internet in those days, if you did not write a letter and post it, wait for a few weeks to get a response, you would loose touch with people. But thanks to technology nowadays we can at the drop of a hat let the whole world know what we are up to and know about people’s very interesting and new lives!

And this has extended even within my work environment. I’ve been working for my company for over 22 years and I have also met many people with whom I have worked and shared many great experiences. Because of the nature of the business (hotels) I have moved around and worked in different locations and cities and every time I’ve moved I have left a bunch of great people behind with whom I had form a bond, a friendship.

This week in one of this virtual social media hang outs someone posted a scanned picture of times gone by. This picture then sparked a conversation between a group of people and we wanted to get in touch with one of our work colleagues from the image. Next thing you know, we’ve tracked him down and we are all in touch again. Then someone says “it would be great to get the gang back together” And that one picture in the Internet with some ex-work colleagues of mine sparked a great moment when I thought “you know what, we can bring everyone that worked in that hotel together” and thanks to the magic of the virtual social network we are doing just that! We began a page inviting anyone who worked a certain era of that particular hotel and within hours we were brining them all in.  It was like being in a pub for a re-union (minus the drinks) everyone began sharing thoughts, names and pictures that brought back such great memories. There is even talk of actually physically meeting again but that may not be as feasible as we are finding out that we have people in that group that now live in all four corners of the world! Then again, through the magic of social networking, we don’t need to be physically there, we are all in one virtual Pub reminiscing on the “golden” ear we all enjoyed.

Looking at some of the comments posted got me thinking we had such fun, it was great to work there and did I really have that hairstyle! And I ponder on the importance of our past and how we must look back at what we did, whom we knew and how we enjoyed our time together, these are all important aspect of who we are today. And who we are today is a refection of our past. This is so powerful that we should never take for granted our history, where we came from. For me I have reminded myself this week never lose track of where I came from, because it will continue to help me get better at what I do and cement further relationships with people that I want, in the future, remain in contract with them through virtual networking.

Have you lost touch with someone from your past? Do you need to get your old photo albums out to remember where you came from and what you have achieved? Don’t be afraid of social networking on the Internet, sometime is a great way to look back at what we were to figure out what we will be.