Hopes and Goals for 2017!

 Friends and Family, Happy New Year!

2016 was a pretty great year for my family history research. Almost 10 months of it were part of my great Year Off, giving me spans of free time and mobility to go off and research that working full time doesn’t allow for. I definitely took advantage of it!  

I attended a national genealogy conference in Fort Lauderdale; I took 2 trips to Alabama, getting to both conduct archival research and meet a branch of my maternal grandmother’s family that we hadn’t even known existed in the process; I attended my maternal grandmother’s family reunion in Georgia and not only got to connect with family I haven’t seen in years but also got to visit the family cemetery on ancestral land, with burials from the mid-1800s!; I visited my paternal grandfather and started a family history conversation that’s already opened doors to fascinating stories; and much more!

All of that said, I know that 2017 will be a different kind of year, not least of all because I have a full-time job again and won’t be doing the kind of travel last year involved. However, I have quite the backlog of information and stories to share, plus a few other hopes and goals for both my research and this blog in 2017.

Here are just a few:

1. Get my family involved in guest-blogging. One of my original goals for this blog was that it wouldn’t just be about research, but about memories, and that it wouldn’t just be a place for my voice, but also for members of my family. Be it sharing a photograph, a quick story, or something more, I need to work harder to get my extended family involved in sharing.

2. Publish at least 26 posts this year. I know this is only 1 post every 2 weeks, but I’m being realistic about the mental demands of my new job this year. If I do better than this, I’ll count it as a win!

3. Work on clearing out my backlog of already-researched posts. There are quite a few stories that are pretty much written in my head, with the documents to support them in my possession, but that haven’t made it onto “paper” just yet. Like actual details about the Cooper Family Cemetery in GA (DONE!), or the mysteries I’m slowly unraveling on both my maternal and paternal lines, or even just an update on my quest to solidly research my 1870 ancestors (as a pre-cursor to Civil War and slavery research). I’m going to knock these out!

4. Continue to work on making this blog readable, useful, and enjoyable. I want the stories to be engaging, the explanations of my research process to be easy-to-follow, and for my family to have no trouble finding information about specific people, places or topics.

I’m really looking forward to 2017, and to continuing to research and share stories of my family. I hope you’ll stick around and add your comments, questions, and helpful advice as I search, struggle along, and hopefully knock down a few brick walls!