Reflecting on Genealogy: Motivation Monday

Public domain,
via Wikimedia.

My goodness, February flew by—even with an extra day, I didn’t accomplish nearly as much as I had hoped. To review:

Client Research

Assisted on two heir search cases—one involving an Irish immigrant to the Los Angeles area and an ongoing heir search in the Midwestern U.S.

Personal Research and Organization

Using the Surname Saturday prompt, I blogged each week about one of my ancestors. In last month’s report, I commented that I thought I might not be able to continue at the rate of one ancestor per week. I’m still concerned about being able to maintain the pace. I am getting a little ahead on my posting so maybe my concerns aren’t warranted.
I managed to transcribe three documents for Amanuensis Monday postings and organized about a dozen other documents. I would like to pick up the pace here, so in March I plan to process a document a day!

Writing

Continued weekly participation in Amy Coffin’s 52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy, although I was a little late on a couple posts!
I have been tracking my word count and in February I wrote 13,762 words for blog posts and Examiner articles. Plus I wrote another 22,406 words at 750words.com – a kind of daily brain dump!
I developed editorial calendars for my blogs and for Examiner.com to make sure that I am writing and posting on a regular basis on all.

Speaking

I presented “Countdown to the Release of the 1940 Census” at the February 15^th meeting of the Genealogical Society of North Orange County California.
Scheduled a presentation of “Digging for Clues in Census Records” for the April 15^th meeting of Questing Heirs Genealogical Society in Long Beach.
Scheduled presentation of “Using Dropbox for Genealogy” on May 8^th with the Computer Oriented Genealogy Group of the North San Diego County Genealogical Society.

Education

Completed my time management assignments for ProGen; as part of this assignment, I developed a client list which includes everything I am working on with due dates and estimated hours to complete. I hope this will help keep me on task!
I participated in an excellent Legacy Family Tree webinar Ten Brick Wall Tips for Beginners presented by Marian Pierre-Louis.
The Legacy Genealogy Idol Competition (available free on Legacy’s website) was fun to watch. Some great tips were presented by competitors Elizabeth Clark, Marian Pierre-Louis, Michael Hait, and Elyse Doerflinger.
Thomas MacEntee of High-Definition Genealogy presented a great Introduction to GoToMeeting designed to give a behind-the-scenes look at one of the popular formats for presenting webinars. I’m scheduled to present a webinar later in the year so it was timely for me.
I’ve almost finished reading Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg, and still need to write the review of The Family Tree Problem Solver: Tried and True Tactics for Researching Your Elusive Ancestors by Marsha Hoffman Rising.

Giving Back

Signed up as a 1940 Ambassador but haven’t written any posts yet.
Signed up for indexing the 1940 census when available.
Created two memorials on FindAGrave for deceased family members, but did not get out to a cemetery to take photos.

Enough about February! I do find that writing these updates each month is helping keep me on track to reach my 2012 goals. On to March!