Randy Seaver has issued the latest weekly challenge for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:

1)  We all have genealogy-related tasks that we “need” to do.  What are yours?

When I first read the title, I imagined that this challenge would pertain to either”things” we need to accomplish certain research or factual data that we needed to resolve issues.

Instead, this challenge has a focus on asking ourselves what WE need to do, ourselves, to further our genealogy research.

Randy has a lengthy list of fourteen items that he needs to do. My list isn’t anywhere near that long, but much of that is because I discarded non-original paper copies years ago and sent my collection out to be professionally digitized a few years back. Everything that I’ve collected in terms of genealogy since then has been digitized by my personal professional scanner (that’s hubby Dave, who good naturedly puts up with it when he finds new items sitting on his computer chair.)

Here goes:

I need to continue to clean up my genealogy software, which includes both entering data for several lengthy descendants files which I’ve created. I’m thrilled to say I finally entered all the new Adams data (Loyalist John Adams) which has taken me a couple of months. My original file was 49 pages. The current version is 299 pages and every single person in it is now in my software. I need to update my Astle, Carlisle, Parker and Wilson descendants, too, but those are much smaller files.

I need to get myself over the the FamilySearch Center this week to read land, probate and town records for my Benjamin Thornton, born c1670 in Providence, Rhode Island because I have a phone consultation with David Allen Lambert on 28 February, hoping that he can give me a few extra pointers on Rhode Island records.

I need to continue to add source citations in RootsMagic, which is part of my clean up project. I’m doing well, as I’ve collected available documents online and created citations for some items which I’ve held in paper format for many years.

I need to get busy and find some more vintage photos and handwritten postcards to send home to descendants. This is an activity that I love, but it’s getting harder to find items that are inexpensive. For some reason, many online sellers believe that an ordinary late 1800s cabinet card is worth $20+, just because it’s old. Maybe it is if a descendant finds it for sale, but for someone like me, who just wants to re-home them, that’s too much money.

I’m hoping to complete my clean up project by the end of this year, which leads me to one other task:

I need to repeat the clean up process for Dave’s family tree, including updating the Miller and Whitmer files that connect to his ancestors.  Thank goodness, I added all the Williams data in several years ago. That was another almost-300-page long project. That just filled up my time for 2024!

This is the right time for me to be doing all this clean up, though, because unless and until new records become available – in any format – it will be difficult to add many more names to my family tree and there’s only slightly more hope for Dave’s.

Okay, that’s my list. One item – getting to the FamilySearch Center – is really easy and will take very little time.

One other – finding the vintage photos and postcards – is hit-and-miss, but is very doable.

The remaining two – cleaning up the two family trees – will take many hours, days, weeks and months to accomplish.

There is one more collateral “I need to do” task. For those of you who use WordPress, you are already familiar with the Gutenberg block editor. To me, it seems very clunky and much more of a pain to use and I’ve avoided it now for four years by using the Classic plug-in. However, I am afraid that the day is coming (maybe soon) when WP will no longer support the old format. Therefore, I need to begin writing posts using the dreaded Gutenberg format. Easy to do, but one task which I keep putting off!

Thank you, Randy, for this week’s challenge.