Old Friends, Old Skills - follow your knowledge not shiny things

This weekend I’m in Rome.
I’m here for the 50th birthday of an old friend, someone I met at university decades ago when both of us were struggling with mathematics and trying to make sense of a subject that made absolutely no sense to us.

We met, I think, through shared confusion. There was this book called Demidovich, full of dense exercises that felt designed to humble even the brightest minds. We were neither of those minds. So we teamed up. Two people who didn’t understand much, sitting together in a small study room, flipping through photocopied problem sets, comparing notes from old exams, trying to connect dots that didn’t want to connect.

That’s where it began. Not through brilliance, but through shared struggle.
When you put two heads together that don’t quite get it, you don’t necessarily become smarter, but you do become friends.

He was the lively one. I was the more analytical type, always trying to find structure in chaos. We would spend hours pretending to study, often ending up just talking about life, music, and whichever café we’d escape to after class. He did his military service at the time, so one day he even came to an exam dressed in full Carabinieri uniform. I still remember the mix of pride and absurdity in that moment.

Those years were messy but formative. I wasn’t good at memorising formulas or applying abstract rules, but I started to realise I had another strength: seeing the bigger picture, connecting complex things, and pulling meaning out of confusion. That’s not how education worked, of course. But it’s how I did.

After university, life took us in very different directions. He stayed closer to home. I moved, worked abroad, built a family, built a career. He did the same in his own way. We didn’t talk much, maybe once or twice a year. Usually, he was the one to reach out. He’d send a birthday message or a quick “Are you coming to Rome soon?” He was the keeper of the connection.

Then, a few months ago, he sent me a simple message: “I’m turning 50. Will you come?”
The answer was immediate. Yes.

No thinking, no scheduling, no hesitation.
Sometimes you just know what deserves a yes.

Back in Rome

Landing in Rome felt like time folding in on itself.
The city is where I lived for twenty years, a place that’s both mine and no longer mine. I stepped out of the plane and the first thing that hit me was the warmth. London was cold when I left. Rome was glowing, loud, alive.

At passport control, my French passport made the system try to talk to me in French, which it did very badly. The translation was so wrong it made me laugh. A small reminder that even systems can forget their past.

My friend had chosen a huge Asian restaurant for his birthday, the kind of place that could hold nearly a thousand people. It was owned by another old acquaintance, someone I hadn’t seen in decades. The party was full of faces I didn’t recognise, which made me oddly relaxed. Nobody expected anything from me.

When he saw me, his face lit up.
We hugged the Italian way: loud, warm, immediate.
Then came the usual questions.
“How are you? What are you doing now?”
And somehow, without even trying, we were back in the rhythm.

It didn’t feel like nostalgia. It wasn’t about reliving our youth or remembering specific stories. It was more like slipping into a familiar language, one we hadn’t spoken in years but still knew by heart.

The conversation flowed easily. We talked about families, my two boys, his two girls. We compared notes on life and work, teased each other about the past, and laughed like time hadn’t touched us.

Old friends have that strange power: the ability to make you feel known, even after years apart. You don’t have to explain who you are. They remember a version of you that no one else does—the raw, unpolished, forming version—and somehow that’s comforting.

I looked around the room full of strangers, thinking how improbable it was that this small thread of friendship had survived decades of distance. He had done the work of keeping it alive; I had just shown up. But sometimes showing up is enough.

Why Old Friendships Matter

Old friendships are easy to restart because they rest on shared context.
You already have the foundation, years of tiny, accumulated experiences that give you a common language. You know how to tease each other, how to read a facial expression, when to joke and when to stop. You can fall back into it without explanation.

There’s also something liberating about not needing to prove anything.
When you reconnect with an old friend, there’s no pitch, no posture, no agenda. You’re just you. And they are just them. You meet again, not as roles or résumés, but as people.

What struck me most during the evening wasn’t nostalgia. It was curiosity.
The connection only works if you’re still curious about who the other person has become. You can’t expect to step into the past; that person no longer exists. But you can use the past as a bridge into the present.

That, I think, is the secret of long friendships: not holding on, but holding open. Leaving space for each other to change and meeting again through that change.

And maybe that’s what experience is in general: a living friendship with your past self.

Old Skills Are Old Friends Too

This whole thing made me think about how similar the process is when we reconnect with skills we haven’t used in years.

There’s something uncanny about picking up an old competence. You open a code editor after ten years, and suddenly, muscle memory kicks in. You remember shortcuts, syntax, little tricks. You start debugging something, and even though the tools have changed, the mental rhythm feels familiar.

It’s the same when you reopen an Excel file, or when you revisit an analytical problem you solved long ago. The first few minutes are awkward, a bit like the first minute of seeing an old friend. Then something clicks. You’re home again.

It’s not just memory; it’s trust.
You trust that version of yourself who once knew how to do it. You let them take over for a while.

That’s why reconnecting with past skills is powerful. It’s faster, richer, and often more joyful than starting from scratch. You skip the insecurity phase. You don’t have to rebuild confidence; it returns naturally with familiarity.

We underestimate how much of what we’ve learned stays within us. Experience leaves fingerprints. Even when you think you’ve forgotten, your mind remembers the pattern.

And just like old friendships, old skills ask for curiosity, not control. You can’t recreate exactly what was. You can only reconnect and let it evolve.

The FinOps Connection: Reconnecting Before Reinventing

In FinOps, and in most areas of professional life, there’s a temptation to chase novelty. New frameworks, new metrics, new dashboards, new buzzwords. We all want to prove we’re evolving.

But more often than not, progress begins by reconnecting with what you already know.

You might come from finance, operations, or engineering. Each of those backgrounds gives you something unique, a way of seeing, a language of reasoning, a set of instincts. Those are your old friends.

So instead of starting with what’s shiny and new, start with what’s familiar and strong.
Adapt your existing context, your strengths, to the new environment.
That’s where quality comes from.

When you operate from familiarity, your narrative is solid. You can explain what you’re doing, why it matters, and where it leads. You can defend it when questioned. You can build trust.

When teams skip that and dive straight into novelty, they often collapse at the first serious question. The boss asks something simple, “Why did you choose this?”, and the answer doesn’t hold. The foundation is missing.

If, instead, you start from something you own deeply, an old skill or an old habit of thinking, you can stand behind your work. You’ll be prouder of it. You’ll push back when needed. That’s the difference between doing something that looks clever and doing something that feels right.

Companies face the same challenge.
Many rush to innovate, layering new tools and processes on top of what already exists without ever fully using what they already have.
But innovation works best when built on competence, not confusion.
You can’t skip the reconnection step.

Reconnect, Then Reinvent

For me, this isn’t about avoiding change.
I love reinventing things—processes, tools, ideas. But I’ve learned that true reinvention always starts with reconnection.

You look at what you already know, what you’ve already built, what’s already working, and you recontextualise it. You join the dots differently. You adapt it to new realities. That’s where creativity lives: in recombination, not replacement.

Even in my own work, I realise I’ve become both a reconnector and a reinventor.
I reconnect with my past experience—the technical, the analytical, the human.
Then I use that foundation to build something new.

It’s like meeting your old university friend after decades.
You’re not the same people anymore, but the bridge between who you were and who you’ve become makes the connection richer, not weaker.

The Hidden Power of the Familiar

In a world obsessed with “new”, we forget the quiet power of the familiar.
The familiar is not stale; it’s stable. It’s the base that allows experimentation without fear.

When you reconnect with old friends, you remember parts of yourself that you thought you’d lost.
When you reconnect with old skills, you recover confidence you didn’t know you still had.
When you reconnect with your past experiences, you give depth to whatever you’re learning next.

Familiarity breeds not contempt, but competence.

That’s why, before reinventing anything—a workflow, a cost model, a career—it’s worth asking:

“What do I already know here?”
“What experience can I reuse?”
“Which old friend can help me start strong?”

The Evening, Still Unfolding

As I write this, the evening isn’t even over.
The music is playing, laughter moves across the room, and I’m surrounded by people I’ve never met. Yet it feels entirely natural to be here.

There’s something grounding about moments like this. They remind you that not everything needs constant attention to endure. Some things—friendships, skills, instincts—just wait patiently until you show up again.

When you do, they welcome you back without judgement, without ceremony, without performance.
They simply say: “Good to see you again. Let’s continue.”

And maybe that’s the best professional advice hiding inside a personal moment.
In FinOps, in learning, in life, you don’t always need to start over.
Sometimes you just need to reconnect.