Genealogy Do Over: Recap or How I Got HERE: Part One

Genealogy Do Over - Restart Button

Well, well, well. Here it is Week Seven. Where am I?

Stuck somewhere back in Week Three or Four.

I lost it. Lost total control. Everything was moving way too fast and my mind was reeling. I kept a paper bag on my desk in my Cave for the increasingly frequent bouts of hyperventilation.

And I wept.

Genealogy is hard ...... When you do it right .....

But here I am. Back in the Cave. Reviewing the topics of the previous weeks. Making yet another checklist of what I did and what is still left to be done.

And, as providence would dictate, these past two weeks I have been flooded with replies to old (some very old) message board posts and new DNA matches - BSO's that distracted me, caught my eye, sucked me in. Took me off course and down the rabbit hole.

Why is it so easy to follow that darn rabbit!?!

Seems I need to recommit. Seems this is a recurring theme. Seems I need to learn some focus.

Or make another checklist.

So. Back to the beginning I go. To the beginning of the year and my grandiose plan of cleaning up my maternal lineage.  I have been avoiding this for several years, as you may know from reading some of my previous posts. The Do Over was my savior. The thing I needed to kick my butt into action. Alas, it is a self-guided course, and I am famous for guiding myself to the coffee pot, facebook, pinterest, what the neighbors are doing next door .......

The beauty of this is that with each "restart" I have made a bit of progress. Each time I "restart" I am a little farther along. I have a bit of new knowledge and a new technique or two under my belt (or should I say in my tool kit).

As I review the past seven weeks I feel terribly lost. Terribly behind. Terribly inadequate. I glance at my paper bag feeling the twinge of overwhelmedness. I pull it together and begin to make a list of all I still need to do:

• Interview the living / conduct self-interview        (Week 2)
• Stupid spreadsheet - stupid, stupid spreadsheet, er, I mean Research Log (Week 3)
• Another stupid, stupid spreadsheet - um, Project and Task Log (Week 4)
• 
  

Wait? That's it?

So what has clearly been holding me up and creating undue anxiety and pig-headedness is the SPREADSHEET!  The elephant in the room that I am trying very hard to ignore as I squeeze past to get to my comfy Cave chair.

Well, if that's all it is maybe I need to just turn my focus on creating this Spreadsheet. I already have the template on my computer...... I'll just go grab a cup of coffee .....

And take a quick peek out the window .....

There Will Be Weeping And Gnashing Of Teeth: Genealogy Do-Over Recap: Weeks 1 - 4

What have I gotten myself into? I like a good challenge as much as the next gal but I am really feeling in over my head here. In my other (non-genealogy) life I am in the middle of leaving one position (read steady paycheck) and beginning a new chapter in my life as my own boss. (Again) Not much stress there, right?  Throw in the Mercury Retrograde, a colonoscopy, scheduling cataract surgery. winter, old dogs, not one, but two genealogy challenges, and a slew of other everyday stuff we all have to deal with, and there will be weeping. And gnashing of teeth. And more weeping.

There is so much information being discussed in the facebook Do-Over group that I can't keep up. And so much of it is over my head! I admit to being a technology toddler. I though I had a pretty good knowledge of genealogy, I've been at it since the 70's, but it's all on paper and hurts my head to think of how I am going to get it all into the programs people are talking about.

I downloaded Dropbox. I downloaded Evernote. Now I have these cute icons on my computer! Yay me! I have a new Win8.1 laptop that I can't figure out. I had hoped to install FTM (latest version) on it and finally learn how to use the darn program. But when I did it made the computer all wonky. So I uninstalled it. And installed it on my Win 7 desktop. GREAT. Now all my Ancestry synced trees have at least three entries for each Timeline item. Awesome. More weeping.

I love genealogy. I would do it 24 hours 7 days a week. I don't love all the stuff I'm not understanding. It is making me angry. And frustrated. And really, really stressed out. Which is the opposite of what a hobby is supposed to be.

My ultimate goal (from Week 2) with this Do-Over is to have a true, clean, sourced and correct pedigree. This will take some time. Perhaps lots of time. Perhaps years of time. It won't/can't happen in just 13 weeks. And I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to.

I got so caught up in the excitement, the flood of new information, the possibilities of doing it over. Of imagining that it would be just that easy, that I could undo all my mistakes in 13 weeks and come out the other side with a sparkly new true and genuine pedigree.

But here's the thing ....

That will never happen. It's not supposed to.

My Aha! moment came this afternoon, after both weeping and gnashing of teeth. This 13 weeks is a classroom to learn new things. To take notes. To try some new techniques. To do a little or a lot. To take what you like and leave the rest. NOT to redo your pedigree. That comes later. After the learning.

I feel like I have been in a wrestling match these last four weeks. Trying to figure out what was right for me. Trying to keep up. Trying to master everything that was being presented, immediately. Spending untold hours on facebook reading post after post until well into the night. Weeping.

Clearly I had become gluttonous, I had attempted to eat the entire elephant in one sitting. I had  forgotten what I had vowed here,
and here.



The clouds parted, the sun shone, and the angels sang this afternoon when I had my epiphany. I am taking a deep breath, a giant step backward and a hands-off approach to the remainder of the Do-Over. I will still lurk in the Do-Over group, but I will not become overwhelmed. I will read the assignment/lesson plan/syllabus for the week and make notes, but I will not become overwhelmed. I will start at the beginning, again.                   And take
                                One bite at a time ......

That is how you eat an elephant.