Organizing Blues

Okay, so I am in another funk.....I have sat down to my desk after having cleaned it off for the 3rd time in as many days. I clean it in preparation to work on my genealogy, but the fact that I am writing this post in my blog is evidence that I really don't know where to begin.

I have been working on my family history on and off for the past 12 years, but I still consider myself a beginner. I usually do pretty good about doing research (or my limited form of it anyway) for a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months. But then I get busy and then I put it aside for varying lengths of time, weeks, months and in a couple of cases years. And it seems that each time I pick it back up, I have to re-teach myself what I should already know.

I really see myself having quite a bit of time that I can "sacrifice" to my family history research. In fact, the last few weeks I have had some time to work on it too. However, my research files and all my physical documentation is in shambles and I have been trying to organized and clean it up (which included my desk). And I am not done, but I am getting really sick of it. I want to get it done, so that I can get my research started again. But I also know the importance of being organized and methodical. (Which will be really important once I start including my kids in my family research).

Any ideas on how to get myself out of these "blues"??

Family Present (as opposed to Family 'History')

I expect a number of "congratulations" and "welcome back"s, now that I have come out of my blogging coma. It's been quite a while since I last posted, but for some good reason. I have either been traveling, helping a friend build a shed, or been doing one of numerous things in getting ready to move into a new place.

However, as the title suggests, there have been a couple of recent events that have prompted me to write this recent installment of my blog detailing my family history experiences. Two of them a somewhat related. My oldest boy turned 8 a couple of weeks ago, which meant two great things happened to him. First, he was baptized and, second, he is now in the scouting program as a Cub Scout. He was extremely excited about both.

I am excited about it too. I was thumbing thru his new Cub Scout book last night and there are a lot of things that I can help him do. I was just waiting for him to get older so I could do them with him, but now he's here. A bunch of things that I didn't get to do as a kid. So, yeah, I'm excited. I also understand that there is a Genealogy merit badge, but I think that will come a little later when he's an actual Boy Scout.

Also, my 12-yo daughter suggested to me that she would like to start learning about genealogy. That's exciting because I think she's old enough to really begin understanding the in's and out's of research. And it would be really nice to have a little research buddy (since my wife isn't really interested in learning how to do it).

So, there is a brief glimpse of my little corner here in Alaska. Hopefully, the next glimpse isn't too far in the future!