My Social Media

In late 2012, I retired from the full-time workforce, primarily related to the state of my health. By the time I retired I had been living with a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis for more than 20 years. Despite the condition, I was able to achieve a successful career, support my family to the point where my daughters have achieved the capacity four independence and to really enjoy my lifestyle primarily with the support of my wife as well as many friends, family and work colleagues. 

When the time came to move on from full time work and acting on the advice of those that have gone before, I took some time to construct a plan for my life in its new form. One important aspect of that plan for me was to ensure that I remained connected with people as had been such an important aspect of life throughout my career. 

 To achieve this, one opportunity that I was keen to examine was the role that social media may be able to play in assisting me to maintain that connection. So, I reached out through Facebook, Twitter and a newly formed blog. Looking back over the past year, I rate myself a C+ in relation to my efforts to remain connected through the social media world. In the relatively already comfortable medium of Facebook, I simply continued to interact with friends and family, sharing experiences from my own days as well as hearing about and seeing their experiences. I also found Twitter beneficial to quickly share simple observations of my daily encounters and experiences. Somewhat unexpectedly, I also found it a rich source of information that I chose to access through the medium. My blog on the other hand has not been as successful as I had hoped. Largely, this is because I have not been as committed as I would have liked to writing regularly and sharing my writings with those who may enjoy or benefit from it. 

So as we enter 2014 I have been thinking about whether my social media experiment should continue and if so how it might add more value for me and those that choose to link with me through this medium. Of course, personal connections over a coffee, dinner table or phone will always remain a staple for me, but I still sense that my connections through social media will add value to my original and sustaining objective of ensuring connectedness with others. 

To improve my efforts and experience in the current year, I intend to maintain my efforts and build on what I have been able to achieve so far. Primarily for my own benefit, I am going to attempt to write more regularly in my blog in the coming year. Through Twitter, (in addition to my random observations of life) each day of the year, I want to share a tweet about how MS has influenced me on that day. Specifically, those tweets will be signed off...MS365 and apart from providing me with an interesting log of my experience, I also hope that for some of you it may provide assistance, insight and encouragement around how to deal with impediments or challenges within your life. 

To all my friends and family, a very happy and fruitful new year in 2014. I look forward to staying connected with you in this coming year and truly value what our connection adds to my life.