87th Carnival Of Genealogy, New Year's Resolutions

The challenge of this carnival, hosted by Jasia at Creative Gene is:

"This year is almost over and a new decade is knocking on the door. This is the perfect time to make your New Year resolutions, goals, aims, declarations, intentions, aspirations, objectives, plans, targets, schemes, wishes, or whatever you want to call them!  Figure out how you're going to approach your family history research next year, write it up, and share it with us in the COG."

I have written this post several times, starting over each time because I did not like how it was unraveling. (Secret confession, one of the reasons I wanted to participate is cause I just LOVE the great looking poster that footnoteMaven designed, isn’t it great??)

But since I never do resolutions, I was having trouble with this. I changed the focus to Genie-goals and yaaaaa, I can come up with a long long list, such as cleaning email accounts, scanning photos and documents, organizing, finishing projects, and MORE.  Lists that every family historian can relate to.

Course, I realized that I have had this Genie-goal list emblazoned in my memory for several years, it really does not vary. Just that realization could be a bit unnerving. It almost seems that I am not making progress, I still have oodles of email to deal with. I still have a long long list of unfinished genie related projects. Then I realized, it is not the goal, it is the journey. It is the relationships with other researchers, with new found friends and cousins, the research trips, the visits to cemeteries, the discoveries along the way that really matter.

I have managed to get a lot of photos and slides scanned, I have managed to deal with several hundred of the emails in just the last 2 months, I have added people to the data base, made some memorials over at Find A Grave, written a few blog posts, I even managed to finish Man’s Christmas stocking this year. I have also done some traveling in Tana, visiting some interesting places, met a lot of interesting “characters”. Working towards the life-long goals, quite satisfying.

Over the last year or so Man and I have had to fight some health issues, happens when you add a few years on the ole bones. This new journey has had a few bumps in the road, and presented us with opportunities to change the way we deal with life. That is the nice way of saying, we had to learn to deal with issues differently. We now find it difficult to plan more than a day at a time. We find ourselves enjoying the atmosphere, the feeling of a new place, and not knocking ourselves out “doing and seeing” it all. Know what?? It is rather nice way to live. One day, one moment at a time.

I HATE writing specific New Year's Resolutions, the disappointment of them not met is more than I care to deal with. I don’t mind having life long goals, I can use these to guide me, improve my attitudes, and hopefully keep me pointed in the right direction.

So, the life long Genie-goals would be, focusing my energies and time management. Don’t procrastinate, concentrate, input! Get the creative juices flowing. Simplify, organize, unclutter.

Goodness, that seems like a tall order, so, I shall attack them one day at a time and if I fall off the wagon and go on a research tangent, hey, it is the journey that counts!

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