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It’s been another whirlwind of a year. After more than two years of doctors and tests, poking and prodding, I finally have a diagnosis–another chronic issue where the treatment contradicts my other chronic condition and vice versa 🤦♀️ Fortunately Cleveland Clinic has specialists there that have dealt with both issues, so hopefully I can get some sound treatment advice and start feeling better! Unfortunately, it’ll be awhile before I’m able to go.
Needless to say, this took a toll on many of my goals, but I did manage to accomplish some things this year. Let’s take a look.
✅ First, I wanted to attend three institutes…I ended up attending four!
- SLIG – Operation Jumpstart: Beyond the Basics of Military Research with Michael Strauss (wonderful!!)
- GRIP – Beyond a Name and Date: Advanced Practices in Social History with Gena Philibert-Ortega (excellent!!)
- GRIP – Women and Children First! with Judy Russell (this was a last-minute addition and it was great!!)
- IGHR – Land Records: Using Maps in Genealogical Research with Melinda Kashuba (lots of fun!!)
✅ I also wanted to publish at least one short guide. While I didn’t technically publish a new one, I did rebrand and revise Your Guide to Genealogy Educational Opportunities and presented it to my email list as a special gift. If you’d like a copy, you can grab it by filling out the short form at the end of this post.
✅ Another goal I had was to publish an article outside of my APG Quarterly “Writing” column. I can check that off the list. I wrote an article about using YouTube for genealogy education, which will appear in the Dec/Jan issue of Internet Genealogy.
✅ I did create a FOREVER Storage account and purchased FOREVER’s photo management software Historian. I spent some time with both and came up with a plan for how I want my workflow to be. Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far in getting things into Storage. However, I took advantage of a big sale and purchased a “box” where I can send in items to be digitize (I sent in a gazillion slides and three reels of film). I have two videos about this (unboxing and packing). I just sent the box in last month and as of a few days ago, everything had been digitized and uploaded to my FOREVER Storage account. So even thought I didn’t get as far as I wanted on the project, just getting that difficult stuff digitized was a huge accomplishment (not to mention a huge time- and money-saver). (Note: The link to FOREVER is sort of an affiliate link. Basically, if you sign up, even for a free account to check it out, we each get a $20 coupon.)
🤷♀️ One thing I had hoped to do was finish writing the narrative I started for my Hanfler and Leppin families. While I did not get any writing done, I did add a chunk of research to the mix, which will complete the family.
🤷♀️ The biggest thing I wanted to do was figure out how I could use Notion as a genealogy research hub. While I had built many of the components of the research hub last December, I hadn’t really touched it until earlier this week. But, I’ve used Notion for everything else in my life, from tracking my migraines to running my business, and everything in between. I simply love that it can do everything I want in one place. No more going from Evernote to Trello to Todoist to Asana to Airtable to OneNote, etc. Notion is an all-in-one solution and I absolutely love it (and I can’t stop talking about it, but I promise, right now, I will). I suppose there’s still time to accomplish this goal in 2022, but with my workload for the rest of the month, I just don’t think that’s going to happen.
🤦♀️ Obviously, the one thing I didn’t accomplish was finishing my book. I have bits and pieces written, but it’s a long way from being finished (to the powers that be, please let it get done in 2023!).
🤷♀️ The other thing I didn’t get done was my ICAPGen accreditation. I’m actually waiting on them (although I do still have some prep work to do). Fortunately, I still have time and it will be completed in 2023.
🤦♀️ I also didn’t finish (or really start) on the German courses I purchased from Katherine Schober. That is definitely going to get done in 2023!
🤦♀️ And why I thought I could find time to work on my own research this year is beyond me. It always goes to the bottom of the priority list. And with chronic illness, anything that at the bottom of the priority list doesn’t get done because we just don’t have many productive hours in the day.
✅ Although not planned, I did land a new gig as the managing editor for the APG Quarterly. My team and I are currently playing catch up, so the September issue, which was my first, was released just last week. December is in progress and we’ll be back on track with the March 2023 issue. (FYI – APG is the Association of Professional Genealogists.)
✅ Another thing I didn’t plan on was creating a YouTube channel. Granted, I’ve had a channel for 11 years when I posted my Flip-Pal demo video. And in 2021, I posted a few videos as an experiment. Early in 2022, my husband encouraged me to focus on videos and on YouTube in particular. For awhile I was posting about once a week. But since I was named editor (see above) in August, I’ve been a little sporadic. I plan to get back on track after the first of the year and post every other week. If you’re not yet a subscriber, I encourage you to head on over and check it out!
✅ Okay, now this one isn’t a genealogy-related goal, but it is a big deal. After 31 years, I quit smoking! This is not something I like to share publicly. I’m I was one of those run-and-hide smokers that didn’t like people to know about my bad habit. But there it is. I’m just over the two-month mark and I’ve been fine the whole time.
So what are my plans for 2023:
➡️ Finish writing my book. This needs to go higher up on my priority list and I just need to keep plugging away at the tasks associated with the project. I also need to stop pushing the deadlines for those tasks out!
➡️ Finish the ICAPGen accreditation process!
➡️ Finish at least one of Katherine Schober’s courses, preferably the German for Genealogists course, which I have started and love so far.
➡️ Publish at least one short guide/booklet.
➡️ Write at least one article for publication.
➡️ Attend two institutes (maybe three): Bridging the Gap: New England to the Midwest, 1780–1850 with Josh Taylor at SLIG, Military III with Michael Strauss at IGHR, and possibly Digging Deeper: Records, Tools, and Skills with Paula Stuart-Warren at GRIP (I’ve heard it’s a great course and sometimes it’s nice to have a refresher and/or learn other people’s perspectives).
➡️ Keep building/testing my genealogy research hub in Notion. Once that’s done, it’s time to turn to the DNA component of the research hub.
