Next Year, I Resolve to....

... organize my files.

Alright, now that you've stopped laughing, continue reading.

For anyone who's worked on genealogy even the least amount of time knows what a funny statement this is.  You know, in genealogy, there is so much to do.  It's much more than find names and dates.  As we do this maddening hobby of ours, we become hand-writing experts, paralegals, map specialists, minor (or major) historians, land/title experts just to name a few.

I look at the various stacks of research papers and record books I have in my genealogy office.  Then I look up at the gallery of my ancestors' photos I have on my wall behind my monitor.  They gaze down at me disapprovingly, as if to say, "We're not going to share what we know until you clean this mess up!"

I've recently come into possession of well over 200 photos from my adoptive father's side of the family.  I need to scan those, but whenever I get ready to do this, I think, "Well, I'd want to upload those to the website...but I don't have this person entered on the website yet."  So, I'll go to enter them, then I end up going over census reports on the internet...then I see an ad to click here....and I end up playing something on Pogo.com.  Is there such a thing as genealogy ritalin?

Do I start with the families that I don't have much information on?  Do I start with the three-inch file I have on my Hoover family?  Do I just just build a bonfire and chuck everything into it?  No, don't worry, that was just a bad joke.

And while we're talking about ancestors withholding information - I'm so ready for a break in some of my brick walls.  There are so many that just seem to have sprung up from the mountains in Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina.  I feel as if I'm whittling away at the bricks with a plastic spoon.

Anyway, enough of my blathering - I have files to organize!