Today I sent away my visa application to the South Korean Embassy in London and also booked my flight (one way only) to Seoul. I’m leaving four weeks today. I keep having little freak outs or moments of realisation. Very exciting and I’m reading more and more about what I’ll be seeing and doing while I’m there. But I’m also thinking a lot about what I’ll be missing from over here. Of course I’ll miss family and friends but the main things which I’m concerned about are my cats and “my” websites and social media for work.
The cats will be fine. That would be a deal breaker for me if they weren’t. They’re going to live with “granny and granda” in Aberdeen. On the run up to our wedding they came up there with us every weekend and have adopted it as there house now. Its an actual house which means they’ve more room than in our one bedder here in Leith. A big garden in which they can play and there’s even a cat flap. Kitty cat heaven. I will still miss them but then there’s always Skype…
What’s going to be stranger though is leaving “my” web/social stuff behind. I know they’re not mine and I probably shouldn’t refer to them as such BUT I’ve put a hell of a lot time, effort and had to fight my corner to protect them at points. As a result I’ve watched them grow and seen them engage people who now use them to get info, report issues and just interact with us through them.
Internally too things have changed. To give you an example of how far we’ve come. When I came to the office for my interview to do my current job a few years back I met one of the officers I would be working with most closely if I was successful. He was talking about how they wanted another way to get feedback from people rather than the meetings they were already having. I said have you ever thought of doing more online and perhaps using social media. He looked puzzled. I thought I’ve used too technical a term.
“Have you thought about using something like Facebook?” I asked. And he replied “What’s Facebook?”
The office now has two websites, Facebook (270 likers), Twitter (750 followers) and a blog and all of them are maintained by members of staff to post their content to inform and engage their/our customers. Now when managers want to carry out a project its guaranteed that there will be a strong comms element to it. Whereas when I first started I had to spend half my time going round all the different teams practically interrogating them for info. Its all really starting to click. And I’m leaving.
I’m really excited about going and my role should always have been to leave after a time but I can’t help that I’m going to miss them. However, in this brave new digital world I can still follow them from the other side of the world and that’ll be my next dilemma…..
