I miss my ancestors. November was a crazy month–in the first half I was busy with some big projects for my organizing clients and in the second half I was hosting a visit from my brother, Larry and his daughter, Miranda, who live in Australia. Then the three of us left to go visit my father in Walla Walla, Washington. That’s where I am now.
Looking at my research log, I see that I researched exactly once in November 2018. That is unacceptable and such a far cry from the almost-daily research I’d been enjoying.
Even though my routines are still messed up by traveling, at the beginning of December I pressed reset and started back with daily research. I missed yesterday, but I hope not to miss any more days this month. If I do, I’ll cut myself some slack and get right back on board.
This morning, I re-read a post I’d written in May 2017 where I talked about circumstances leading up to a (much briefer) research hiatus. In that post, I talked about the fall-back projects I have where I can make a little progress in a brief period of time and keep the daily research going, even if it’s very brief.
I’m so glad I read it and was reminded of my source documentation project from 2016, where I started going back through my sources, making sure they were cited consistently and that all the relevant data was extracted from each document. I also make sure that an image of the source document is attached to the source record in Reunion.
I’ve found that over the last half dozen years, I’ve become a more skilled researcher. Back in the day, I missed a lot, so this is a really worthwhile endeavor. When I started checking my source documentation in 2016 I had 300 sources and I’ve checked 85 of them. Two and a half years later, I have 896 sources. I’d like to think that at some point I’ll decide that I can stop checking the sources because I knew what I was doing and there’s nothing to be gained. I can’t wait to find out at what point that happened!
Unless feel like exploring something else, I’ll stick to reviewing my source documents for the rest of the year as I think about my genealogy goals for 2019. I’m excited to get back in the swing of things and reconnect with my ancestors!
Edited to add: During today’s source documentation checking, I discovered that my great grandmother’s sister was married the same day she was. My 2nd great aunt and her husband are on the same scan of the marriage record book as my great grandparents. Shame on me for missing that, but I’m so glad I was able to add a person to my tree simply by checking my sources!
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