Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun topic on Genea-Musings this week is “Your Genealogy Life.”

I have to admit that I have been a complete genealogy addict since I got my first answer in the mail (snail mail, of course) back in 1980. What I have really loved about it is that, through the years, with work, raising our son and other responsibilities, genealogy has been a hobby that could be pursued, put away in the closet and then again pursued through all these years.

Now that I am retired, I have a lot more time each day that can be devoted to family history research and I will say that I do find it annoying when things like laundry, cooking and cleaning the house still get in my way!

Also, having read Randy’s post where he spends 50-60 hours per week on genealogy, I don’t think there will be many people who can top that. I would estimate that I probably spend about 40 hours per week spread out over all seven days.

What do I do in all that time?

Daily:

1. First thing every morning, I check Feedly and start reading blogs. Being on Pacific time, 6:00 a.m. here is already 9:00 on the East Coast and many daily posts are already in my queue. I spend about an hour here.
2. Next, I check on my own blog to make sure the post has gone online. I also check on live traffic to make sure the techy end of the blog is in good shape. This step is quick – maybe 15 minutes.
3. The majority of my time each day is spent researching information for topics that I have on my list or generating ideas for new topics to add to it and creating at least the framework, if not the entire post, for these topics. Setting up and/or writing new posts takes 2-3 hours. Sometimes that is spent all on one post, but at times, I can write two or maybe three shorter posts in the same amount of time. I have a lot of posts lined up in my queue, so there are some days when I don’t work at all on new blog posts.
4. When I am not directly working on a blog post, I am looking for new clues and information on people already in our family tree. I might spent 2-3 hours of each day on new research, either on my family or my husband’s.

Weekly:

1. During most weeks, I watch at least one genealogy webinar and, often, two.
2. I start adding blog posts to my upcoming Recommended Reads list.
3. I follow multiple genealogically-oriented groups on Facebook and update my Pinterest board. Anyone who checks my posts will notice that I just about never post anything “social.” My posts all tend to be responses to items posted in those groups. I probably only spend about 30 minutes each day on this because I skim over many of the posts and only slow down to read the few of real interest to me. I don’t use Instagram and my own personal opinion is that I see no useful purpose for the existence of Twitter!

Monthly:

1. I belong to the Pima County Genealogy Society and regularly attend their monthly meetings from September through June. I also belong to their RootsMagic SIG and attend their six meetings (every other month) throughout the year.
2. I teach a small local genealogy group and we meet at my house once a month, all year long. There are ten of us and the others were mostly all beginners when we started five years ago. We’ve gained and lost a few members through the years, but everyone seems to have fun and learn something new at each meeting. Our regular meeting is from 11-1, but since we have all left Family Tree Maker and migrated to RootsMagic, we have a RootsMagic only session (also taught by me) from 10-11 the same day. Before each session, I create a lesson handout, which is shared via Dropbox.