52 Weeks to Better Genealogy - Week 51: Goals for 2011

Happy New Year! In a few short hours most of us will gather with family and friends to ring out 2010 and welcome the new year. Thanks to the wonder of technology, we can literally celebrate the new year as it makes it way around the world. As I reflect back on the 2010, I find myself counting the many blessings that I have been given and thinking about the moments that were, well, feeling anything but a blessing. And yet, I realize that even these moments were in my life for a reason, a lesson that I have yet to realize.

As we make our way towards that new page in the calendar it is inevitable that we feel the need to make resolutions that will make our lives - and ourselves -  better: kicking the tobacco habit, losing weight, eating better, engaging in regular exercise. Amy Coffin encouraged family historians in The We Tree Genealogy blog to look beyond our immediate horizons and stretch our researching muscles with 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy all designed to help make us better family historians. In week 51 she challenges us to think about our goals for 2011 and to write them down.

2011 is designated as the year I stop collecting and begin organizing, writing and sharing.

While there are several members of my family tree who are on my Most Wanted list, my most pressing goal for 2011 is to organize, scan and share with my family the wealth of family photographs in my possession. Some of them need to be identified with family members, several of them will require some serious work in Photoshop but all of them have a story to be told and I look forward to sharing these stories.

There are many of my ancestors stories that I have discovered that need to be put down: Lizzie Goldrick's trip to England to make a withdrawal on a reported bushel of gold, my uncle Earle Bergeron's military service and time spent as a Flying Sergeant and there are several of Grandma Space's journals waiting to be transcribed.

To quote Edith Lovejoy Pierce: We will open the book.  Its pages are blank.  We are going to put words on them ourselves.  The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.

Copyright (c) Cindy Bergeron Scherwinski. 2010