So this will start off topic to elearning, but I’ll try to bring it back to that.
I recently (yesterday) lost a very very dear colleague that I have worked with for 10 years. Colleague is not a strong enough word. I lost one of my best friends. If that sounds like she passed away, it does indeed feel like it, but no she was let go from our organization.
I, for reasons that I’m sure are clear, will not go into the details of why or the speculation of why, however it does indeed feel like I’ve experienced a death in my family. That sense of lost of someone so close to you, that you saw daily, laughed with, new all about their family life, their kids, their pets, etc. It’s all gone. She is now gone. I no longer can come in the morning and look forward to working with her and laughing with her on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.
It’s sad.
But to pull this back to an elearning perspective…what the heck do I do to get on with my work life and ensure I include her in my personal life. Social Media tools of course are the answer (and a trip across town occasionally will help too).
When close colleagues move on to other adventures, with or without their own doing, social media tools now afford us the connection to still be able to be a part of one another’s lives. We can do it on a personal level by chatting in chat windows, messaging through Facebook (FB), sharing videos, sharing photos, blogging our adventures. The possibilities are endless.
The fear I have are those connections often become fainter and fainter. I find myself very often looking (or I suppose the term is more likely lurking) at my old friends FB pages and I’m completely interested in where they are, what they are doing and how their families are, but I’m a slacker and don’t always ask questions. I don’t always make the effort to truly find out how they are doing and what is new in their lives on a personal level. Often what most of us share through our networks are just the good points. The birthday pictures, the milestones, the achievements. However, it is the ups and downs of life that make our lives as interesting and as intriguing. It is these points within our daily routines of getting up and going to bed that truly connect us to one another.