Postcard from 1915
As we embark on a brand new shiny New Year, I think most people are hopeful that the new year will be bigger and better than the year before. Many people make New Year’s resolutions so that they have goals for the new year. Over the past several years I haven’t done this because it always seemed to set me up for failure and honestly; who wants to fail?
But this year I’ve decided to do things a bit differently. I’ve decided to shout it out from my blog in the hopes that this will keep me on the right path and accountable to you; the readers.
So what are these resolutions? Well, there are a few, and I hope that you might join in.
- This year I commit to working on my tree more. That’s not such a different thing really. But the difference for me is I’m not going to get hung up on the same one guy (Willie Beaton). I’ve been trying to break down a brick wall over the past several years and although I’ve made some headway it’s still there. So this year I commit to going back to my roots (so to speak). When I first started doing genealogy, I worked on “the family of the month.” This is where I’d choose the family I was going to work on and commit to working on just them for a month. Once the month was over then, I could decide to continue with them for another month or work on another family if I was losing interest or momentum.
- The second resolution goes hand in hand with the first. Expand my tree. In a recent webinar, I watch with Blaine Bettinger called Evaluating a Genealogical Conclusion including DNA,
he spoke about how “complete” is your tree? He had a chart that I found so interesting that I stopped the webinar and create one for myself. It really hit home how much more work I have to do. After all, if I want to connect with DNA cousins and compare my tree then I better have a more complete tree than I do. Below is my chart and you can see what I mean. When many of the cousins you connect with through DNA are 3rd cousins or greater you can see that 56% or less just doesn’t cut it.
- If you read my blog on Tuesday, you know that I’ve committed to starting a Genealogy Jar and with the added research I’m going to do I’m hopeful that I’ll have lots of notes to put in my jar.
- Start writing my family history is another thing that I want to get into. I’ve dabbled with the idea of writing, heck I’ve even taken a few courses. But now I want to set aside time each day. After all, if I’m going to expand on my tree, you don’t want to wait until you finished to finally get started on writing the book because then that would make it a monumental project.
- Finally, I need to be more active. I mean physically active. One of the downfalls of genealogy is that it can lead you to spend a lot of your time sitting. Unless of course your walking through a cemetery on the hunt for an ancestor. But that’s just the point if you want to continue to be able to traipse through those cemeteries you better be in good health and physically able to do it.
So this is my list… there could be more but I don’t want to get carried away. If you’d like to join in you’re welcome to do so. I’ve created a closed group on Facebook called; Genealogy Resolutions. I hope your join me there and let the group know your genealogy goals and perhaps together we can cheer each other on.