How Could I Have Forgotten?

I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies. And I get those tendencies at the most unusual times.

I was working on something I had to complete for work earlier when I was hit with a strong compulsion to check one of my old email accounts. It was a feeling I couldn't shake and kept bothering me until I couldn't work anymore until I did.

I created that email account in 2005, before I left my first job. The primary purpose of that account was to back up the personal emails that I wanted to save that were sent to my work email account, before it was disabled.

(Lesson learned: never, ever use your work email for personal correspondence... but I was young then and I was proud of my first work-related email account so I used it a lot to email my friendly friends back then)

I haven't opened that email account in a long time and I have long forgotten the emails and most of the people behind those emails. I decided to close that account and forward the emails I wanted to keep to my now-with-unlimited-capacity primary web email. So I started reading through them...

How could I have forgotten you?

Most of you have heard my horror stories.... the reasons that pushed me to quit my first job. Due to the poignancy of those events, I guess it was easy to overlook the small things.

The small things that kept me there for a long time, and in spite of everything that happened, made it difficult for me to leave.

It was all there in the emails I kept.

How could I have forgotten?

The small jokes and how we managed to laugh after a meeting gone bad (...really bad, I think). Small discussions with my boss who had a big part in shaping my professional values (until now, I still have his words of wisdom in my head... and I like to think I'm living them). Stories, small talk, and angst bouncing back and forth between floors when we couldn't talk out loud because we had people breathing down our necks (literally for some of us, haha).

My last few months were the most tumultous, but your old emails reminded me that there were good times. There were friends and good things worth remembering.

I remember now. And I hope I never forget again.