Reviewing 2017

As 2017 winds down, I like to reflect on my genealogy accomplishments. I started 2017 like I do every year with high hopes of making genealogy more of a priority.

During 2017, I finally uncovered my biological grandfather. My three year journey was very exciting and finally being able to put a name to a blank spot on my pedigree chart was very exciting. I was hoping to create a family history book on my biological grandfather that I could share with my siblings, however that was an epic fail. I guess this will get push to my 2018 goals.

I spent most of my genealogy research time this past year not on my genealogy goals, but on researching prospective members lineages who wanted to join my local DAR chapter. DAR is the acronym for Daughters of the American Revolution, in case you didn’t know.  Being my local DAR chapter Registrar means applications of prospective members fall into my lap. I have learned many new research skills with research in areas that I was not familiar with and thus I feel as if I have improved my research skills. Even though the position has been very fulfilling, I am looking forward to the end my term in 2018 so that I can go back to my own research.

I have decided that in 2018, I will more goal orient. What I mean by this, I will have clear goals before each session of genealogy research that I am able to fit into my schedule. I will also make sure to schedule genealogy into calendar, since we need to make time for the things that we find important. I also wanted to do more blogging in 2017 and for me to accomplish this goal in 2018, I will need to schedule that into my calendar too!

Looking back on 2017, I struggled getting into the mood to do genealogy for too many reasons to cover here. However, looking forward to 2018 I will change this. I was looking at my kindle books and I found many books that could help me stay motivated. Such as 52 weeks of Genealogy, Projects for every week of the year by Nancy Hendricks. I was thinking of perhaps obtaining The Genealogy Do Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee or 31 Days to Better Genealogy by Amy Johnson Crow. Both books have Facebook groups and webpages by the same name that could help keep my genealogy moving forward. I like books better than Facebook, because there are too many Shinning Bright Objects to distract me on Facebook, thus I know I need to stay clear of Facebook when I am supposed to be doing my genealogy research.

Finally for the record, I have not received any compensation nor will I receive any monetary compensation from the three books or authors listed above.  The links provided are just links back to their webpages.

Happy New Year!