As 2020 (thankfully) comes to a close, I am not alone in saying that it certainly didn’t turn out the way anyone expected. Having said that, being stuck at home instead of on a cruise ship sailing the high seas helped me accomplish the most dreaded of my four genealogy goals for this past year.
To recap, here is the short list:
- Continue to give back to the genealogy community, through teaching, volunteering with SCVGS and finding homes for orphaned EBay vintage photos.
- Make a new attempt at the mind-numbingly boring task of renaming images and reattaching them in new family trees. 2020 may be the year since I was on quite a roll in the fall before we left on our cruises to New England and then Hawaii.
- Continue to work on brick walls in both family trees. I am really pleased with and inspired by my successes at revisiting long dormant research lines. Not only am I able to document new information, but my findings provide fodder for blog posts. A double win!
- Continue my genealogy education. I am sad that I won’t be at RootsTech 2020 in person this year, although I am a virtual ambassador. However, there are many other conference opportunities and webinars available through which I can extend my genealogical knowledge and skills.
How well did I do at accomplishing my four goals?
1. All went well with giving back to the genealogy community until March, when the world shut down. My teaching and volunteering came to a quick halt. However, through the year, I still faithfully found homes for vintage photos who had lost their families. Goal Accomplished!
2. The pandemic really helped with the renaming task – I had all images for both my tree and my husband’s family tree renamed and reattached by June! Goal Accomplished!
3. I’ve made excellent progress looking at long dormant research lines in the family trees. Evidence of my success will be seen in early January in my annual Ancestor Statistics post. Goal Accomplished!
4. I attended RootsTech virtually and also watched more webinars than I ever have in the past – and that’s a lot because I love genealogy webinars! The only disappointment was logging into SLIG at the exact moment registration opened and getting shut out in less than a minute. That was very stressful and I won’t be trying that ever again!Aside from that frustration, there were days when I had 4 webinars per day to attend. I also attended about a half dozen other conferences which went online for the first time because of the pandemic. I wouldn’t have been able to attend them in person if they had been traditional conferences, so I was quite happy. Goal Accomplished!
What’s next for 2021?
Goals 1, 3 and 4 will continue, at least in the format created by COVID-19 conditions. I love finding homes for those old family photos, will continue to work on more brick walls, or at least the long time silent lines to see what new (documented) information is out there and I most certainly will be in attendance at upteen webinars and virtual conferences. I am a 2021 RootsTech Ambassador and this year’s event will be spectacular with its worldwide focus.
I plan to keep Goal 2 – the mind numbing goal – on my list once again this year. I am on a roll cleaning up my software so I am sticking with it. I use RootsMagic 7 and have decided to focus on cleaning up my source citations (which may or may not be with those darned templates). I’ve already cleaned out all the alternate names and entered all of my Female (MNU)s into one format. Next, I am cleaning out all the extraneous facts that RootsMagic generated. I have no idea how I did it, but sometimes a Residence fact is listed 3 or 4 times in the same census year and alternate names for a husband include the spouse’s name and vice versa. I prefer to enter my own facts. Given that I see no travel away from home in the foreseeable future (read that as at LEAST until Fall 2021 and perhaps not even then), I will roll with the mind numbing software tasks and stick with it! I will be very glad to sign off on Goal 2 in a year’s time!
What genea-goals have you set for yourself?
Linda, I applaud you for completing the photo renaming/reattaching goal! A true accomplishment. And I really like your goal #1 of finding new homes for those vintage photos. You are doing a very good deed for those families. Stay safe and I’ll “see” you at RootsTech in February!
Great job on achieving all your goals!!! Those mind-numbing ones are certainly necessary to pursue.
You’ve seen my goals 🙂 And yes, giving back is one I should have mentioned. I do some indexing, but also, through my work at the library, give back by helping people with their genealogy. In February I did my talk on British Genealogy Resources to the Elder College Class (a yearly thing) and in September I even gave a Zoom webinar about using FamilySearch, as I had our library certified as a FamilySearch Affiliate 🙂
For some of your goals, the pandemic and staying at home really worked in your favor. Good job on the re-naming. I don’t have the patience for that, or for attaching images to people on trees or in software. I’ll get to attend RootsTech virtually this year. Yeah!
Loved this post, Linda! It’s always inspiring to see other people’s genealogy goals, I think it’s fantastic to learn from one another in this area. And congratulations on what looks like a very productive year of family history research in 2020.
Would love more people to go public with their genealogy ambitions and how they turn out – so much so I included you on my new blogpost on achieving your genealogy goals 🙂
https://parchmentrustler.com/family-history/keeping-genealogy-goals/