Reminiscing About Blogging

The reason I started my internet genealogy journey, was to blog my sweetheart's stories so my children would have them. I blogged Sentimental Sunday stories which I also called my Hero stories. I looked forward to that date with my blog every Sunday. Then I branched out in my posts as I found the group "GeneaBloggers" started by Thomas MacEntee, and a few special bloggers like Carol Stevens who has the blog Reflections From the Fence, FootnoteMaven, who at the time was doing themes of Carnival Of Genealogy, until her health became a challenge. Lisa of Smallest Leaf was also one who gave me encouragement. I loved the memes they had and the comradery. As with all things, many branched to another area, health issues, we lost a few, and I became involved deeper into my mission with FamilySearch, which I love, and soon, I found it hard to make that blog post more and more.

yes, I felt like I was running away. 

Today, I revisited my blog going back to the beginning and saw why I had loved it.  I wasn't trying to meet a standard or show I had an understanding of writing, genealogy, etc. I was just sharing and having fun.  Which unless you are a business and trying to show your professional side, that I believe is what it should be.  I am going to start making an effort to go back to my personal blogging and sharing with my family again.  I am not a professional and would hope that the blog would not be judged by such standards.
There are memes by Thomas...the Geneablogger Daily Prompts, Amy Crow has a 31 Days of Genealogy, Olive Tree still has a prompt Sharing Memories, Aine of BlueRaspberrySundays posts a prompt on Sundays. You can even find Family History Writing Prompts on Pinterest which is helpful for blogging if you think you are having a challenge with subject matter.
If you are like me, and see your posts have dwindled down over time, go back and see why you started, why you were excited.  It is almost like a marriage, you have to work at the relationship to keep it alive.  I have seen some move to a different server to perk up their blog; this I am not going to do as I have seen their pain as they went through that process.  I am looking to renew my blog relationship not start a new one. I digress. Use the memes again, post fun things as well as great finds.

This has been my thoughts and I am sorry to use your time to help myself find what I have been missing. Hope it helps you.  

Genealogy new year resolutions

A lot of ideas are coming through for reinvigorating our genealogy research in 2015.

Thomas MacEntee has proposed a genealogy do-over starting 2 January. There is a schedule of topics taking us up to the end of March. There is a FaceBook community with 836 members already excitedly exchanging ideas. Many experienced genealogists have come on board and it will be interesting to learn from them.

It is hard to start again but I think it is definitely an opportunity to put into practice all we have learned and apply it to our own family. All of us know more about genealogy research than when we started and do not often revisit the very core of our family tree. There is no question we will make new discoveries. We will probably also be more organised. It is a great opportunity to follow up on Pauleen Cass's post on her three Rs of Genealogy Research : Revisit, Record and Revise.

Some of the ideas that are being shared on organisation:

• Jenny Lanctot on consistency in file naming: http://aremyrootsshowing.jenny-ology.com/2014/12/28/genealogy-do-over-prep-time/
• Miriam Robbins has an elegant way of naming files at http://ancestories1.blogspot.com.au/2008/12/tuesdays-tip-organizing-your-digital.html
• Russ Worthington will not be doing a complete do-over but will be participating. He has already been doing a lot of work with citation templates http://ftmuser.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/genealogy-do-over-and-my-ftm2014.html

I have found blogging to be a great way to revisit and record my family history. A couple of prompts I use to help me find inspiration are:

• Trove Tuesday, started by Amy Lehmann in 2012
• The Sepia Saturday prompts are a lot of fun and it is a very nice community of fellow bloggers (several of whom contribute to this blog)
• Last year I participated in the A to Z blogging challenge. It was a lot of work to produce 26 blog posts in the month of April but I am really pleased with the results. It was very important to prepare so as to be able to complete the schedule.
• Randy Seaver has enjoyable and thought provoking prompts at Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (SNGF)
• Thomas MacEntee has lots of prompts and ideas at http://www.geneabloggers.com/

This year I plan to join in the 52 ancestors in 52 weeks challenge by Amy Johnson Crow.

My own family history blog reached 150 posts late last month. I can't quite remember what the prompt was but I decided to print my blog. I used blog2print. It works on various platforms. There are several other providers who also print from blogs. I found blog2print very easy. There are limited options to tweak though you can choose to print only part of your blog using tags or a date range. You can vary the size of the photographs, whether you have a page break between each post ... I am really pleased to have a print copy of my blog. Some of the formatting has not translated perfectly from the screen to the printed page but overall it is a marvellous souvenir and back-up. I look forward to printing volume 2 towards the end of 2015.

Happy researching in 2015

Regards
Anne

Back in the Stream of Blogging With A Hook

Fishing for Family - You Might Have A Great Catch!
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net ID-100165715

I am so impressed with people who seem to be able to publish blog posts about all aspects of their family history - from stories about their ancestors, reviews of the software and apps, travel to their ancestral homelands, cemetery visits, research trips and conferences, to in-depth discussions of their methodology. I even have two genealogy friends who have outlined their A-Z Challenge blog posts (thematically) for 2015!

On the other hand, I am one of those bloggers who has the best of intentions, but not the best follow-through. That is one of the reasons that I jumped on this Worldwide Genealogy blogging bandwagon. Although I am busy with a variety of genealogy/family history related projects, I did want to get back into blogging (as that is where most of my personal family history research is found). When Julie Goucher first mentioned the idea, I thought I can post once a month in 2014 and Julie knows where to find me if I don't. I also hoped that the commitment to Worldwide Genealogy would get me back on track with my own blogs (hey it is always a little bit about self-interest). So I signed on and started with baby steps.

I wrote my first four blog posts here as the spirit moved me. All it took was a bit of thought (walking is a great activity to clear your mind and get ideas for blog topics) and a bit of discipline (calendar the publish date, write up the post at least a few days early, and give myself a day to review before hitting the publish button).

Now it was time to take a look at my own blogs (oh, the horror and all those cobwebs!) and see if they could be saved. I have one blog for my paternal side The Keough Corner and one blog for my maternal side Scandia Musings. The first decision was whether to invest the time and effort in updating the layout, cleaning up (actually pruning) the pages, and committing to posting on a regular basis. I spent some time in April doing just that - reading a variety of blogs, playing with colors, fonts, sidebars and widgets - spring cleaning the layout, tweaking the content, and checking out the results. Now I needed a hook - something that would nudge me to post at least once a week.

Enter Cheri Hudson Passey who publishes her blog at least weekly using the meme of writing about her family history calendar - she uses the calendar creator/list feature in Legacy to note the birthdays and anniversaries of people in her family tree. She borrowed this meme from Linda McCauley (one of my partners in crime over at the Legacy Virtual Users' Group Community on Google+). This looked like a great plan to get me back in the blogging stream with baby steps.

Using Legacy (most of the genealogy database programs have this same feature) - I print to PDF the calendar list for any given month - in my case, one for my Murphy-Keough direct line (tag 1) and one for my Zagradisnik-Lidman direct line (tag 2). Then I go to my Legacy database and check out the family members whose names are in the upcoming week to get a bit more of their back story. The first time I did this I spent a few hours doing a bit of research to fill in some blanks. This is a great way to focus on family members you might miss otherwise - and who should not be remembered on their birthday or anniversary? It is also interesting to see who had a birthday in any given month (if you are into astrology at all  you will find those family members who share a sign - as in "oh, that explains it, he was an Aries").

If you are getting back into the blogging habit or thinking about blogging for the first time, why not try a meme (simply a hook) to get you started. And nothing could be easier or more rewarding than to focus on your own family. An added benefit - if you use the names, dates, places, and a bit of their story, you might just get a nibble on that cousin bait hook you put in the internet stream. I have already heard from two potential connections this past month.

Cousin Bait Anyone?
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net ID-100224539

So, why not try fishing for ancestors. Do you have suggestions for topics that make blogging a bit easier and/or more fun for you? Please share them with the rest of us in the comments section. Now it's time to bait those hooks (I fish on Sundays).

Gone Fishing!
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net ID-10028030