Thursday, August 10, 2017

Dear Randy: What Does Your Typical Genealogy Month Include?

A society colleague asked me this question recently, and I thought I would share my answer with my readers.

I picked July 2017 as a "typical" month because I could recall pretty much everything I did in that month.  It's not that typical because I teach the OASIS class only three times a year (4 sessions), and I don't have speaking engagements every month.

My genealogy goal is to document my ancestry as best I can using traditional and online resources, to learn as much as I can about genealogy and family history, and to participate in the genealogy community - both online and locally.

To that end - here are my activities during July 2017:

*  Taught my 4-session (8 hours total) OASIS class on "Beginning Computer Genealogy" at the new OASIS center in Grossmont Center in La Mesa on July 6, 13, 20 and 27.

*  Made a 90 minute presentation on "Genealogy - Be An Ancestry Detective" at La Jolla Public Library on 17 July..

*  Presented two talks at the San Diego Genealogical Society monthly meeting on 12 July.

*  Attended the Chula Vista Genealogical Society board meeting on 5 July.

*  Wrote, edited and published the July 2017 issue of the 10-page CVGS Newsletter on 10 July.

*  Led the CVGS Research Group meeting on 12 July.

*  Attended the CVGS program meeting on 29 July.

*  Prepared for the RootsMagic Review workshop for CVGS on 5 August.

*  Led the SDGS RootsMagic Users Group at the FamilySearch Library on 22 July.

*  Linda and I flew into Oakland and attended my brother-in-law's wife's birthday party on 15 July.  We discussed her family history, and some of my brother-in-law's too, during this two day trip.

*  Wrote 87 Genea-Musings posts during July, 19 posts on The Geneaholic blog, and 6 posts on the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe blog.

*  Read genealogy and family history blog posts on Feedly and Facebook posts every day.

*  Read and answer (as required) 20-40 genealogy related emails every day.

*  Watch several YouTube videos and/or Family Tree Webinars each week.

*  Downloaded and installed Family Tree Maker 2017 genealogy software, and tested it out on several family tree databases.

*  Tested the RootsMagic 7 TreeShare and Ancestry WebHints features and started using it daily.

*  Added 441 persons, 994 events and 831 source citations to my RootsMagic database, and matched 500 persons to FamilySearch Family Tree.

*  Searched for vital, land and probate records for my ancestors on Ancestry, MyHeritage, Findmypast, FamilySearch and AmericanAncestors in order to feed my blog posts.

All in all, I estimate that I spent about 240 hours in July doing something related to genealogy.

In our "real" life, we attended two Padres games during July, and watched about 22 more on television.  We went to church four Sundays, and attended the fireworks on July 4th in the church parking lot.  I sleep 6 to 7 hours a night, take a nap every day, eat three square meals every day, read one to two library books each week (usually while watching baseball games or TV news), go to the grocery store or discount store several times a week, walk around the block some days (usually around sunset when it's a bit cooler) and work in the garden occasionally.  I sit too much.

Needless to say, genealogy is the major time-spender in my life at this time.  We are retired and fill our days with tasks and interests that are fun or necessary.  Life is good here in the Genea-cave.

How do you spend your genealogy time each month?  I guess I should have made this a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun topic.

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Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver


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