Dare to nightmare.
Recently, I have had several series of dreams that have had continuous plot lines that have gone to two or three parter’s. The common thread through all of them is that they are things I’ve done before. It was places I’ve previously worked, places I’ve already visited and things I’ve already experienced. The twist on all of them, is that I’m experiencing these things with someone from a different environment.
I think I finally figured out why I’m having these dreams. It’s because today I’m going to experience something I’ve done before, but with different people. At 43 years of age, I’m going to go back to school. I’m going to get my back to school picture that my wife will post on Facebook and I’m going back to school to learn something relatively new (Social Media) with an entirely new set of people. It’s strange to go back to something when you think you’ve already been there. It’s strange to think that when you are 43, you can learn new things, from people way younger than you. At my age, you’d think you are the one that knows everything. But really, aren’t you learning or re-learning things from young people all the time?
Please show me stuff.
Like when you are trying to figure out this new fangled phone you were given at work that you give to your pre-teen and she takes it and shows you how to do everything on it in 5 minutes. Or when you were a lifelong basketball player/fan and your third grader decides to try football, and teaches you all about football and can tell you plays called motion or wedge?
How is it that when I’ve have been a blogger for four and a half years, and I can come upon a blogger that has only been doing it for two weeks and they can give me an insight into widget, or some social media site, or some promotional site that can teach me how to get more followers? How is it that I can learn something from someone so much more inexperienced than me?
In my dream I was super frustrated that someone that was so much younger than me was showing ME the ropes. How dare they? I was the one who had done this for so long. I was the one that knew all the techniques. But, really how could I dare think that the way I had done it was the only way? How could I think I knew it all? I haven’t lived a lifetime. I haven’t done it all. There are a thousand ways that something like this could be done.
Today I start my journey, a short one, but a journey nonetheless to learn something that is somewhat foreign to me, Social Media. Sure I use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube and the like. But I barely know anything about how they can benefit companies. Not really. I need training from people that know more than me on the subject, before I go begging to work for a company.
A lot of us think we know so much about something. But, even math and science, that stuff that holds the keys to the universe and how it works, the stuff that must be proved, and the answers are always the same, (IE 1+1 always equals 2) is still growing and learning and new formula’s are still being figured out.
Today, I go learn from some young Padawan’s. I learn way more about a subject than I already know. I grab an ever growing bull by the horn’s and try to tackle it and make it my calf. I bring it to my farm, brand it with my knowledge, drink its milk and then put it out on the job market, with its combination of experience and the new knowledge learned from both younger and older teachers.
And hopefully wake up from the dream having learned a trick or two about things I thought I knew.
ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH
Bitter Learning from Young Ones Ben