52 Weeks – Week 51: Perseverance

Another Self-Administered Pat on the Back

It’s the penultimate week of Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors Challenge, which is all about “Perserverance”. When I reflect upon this week’s theme, I keep coming back to the satisfaction I feel upon successfully rising to the challenge (albeit with one week to go!). This was the third time I signed up for the challenge, and as the saying goes, third time is the charm!

While I have been working on my family history since I was in elementary school, my greatest lapse has been writing it up. I’ve managed to collect a lot of information over the years and have recorded it all in RootsMagic, writing about my family history has been sporadic and scattered throughout various media and platforms. With this blog, I had hoped to consolidate a lot of that material in one place. So far, I have managed to do exactly that. An added and unexpected bonus is that with each entry, I learned about gaps in my research and knowledge, which lead to me improving upon those aspects of my genealogy.

Another benefit (which I had hoped for) is that this blog has served as a basis of compiling a family history book. Undertaking that project revealed how much writing I have done for this blog over the last year. With this post, the document is approaching 185 pages!

Given the primary purpose of this blog, I have largely written it for myself. However, I regularly share my weekly entries on the Twitter account I created as a companion to the blog and in the “Generations Café” Facebook group created by Amy Johnson Crow. As a result, a few people have taken the time to read it and provided some favourable feedback. For that, I remain grateful.

Finally writing about my family history in an organized way has certainly been a huge improvement in my genealogical habits. I am glad that I persevered with it over the last 51 weeks.