Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Starting June Out Right

Normally this time of year I'm sitting by the pool, working on my tan and catching up on my reading every morning. Not this year. The weather sucks. So I'm inside, bundled up. Forced to do unseemly things such as clean out my file drawers and digital files (photos files, Ancestry Shoebox, e-mail folders etc.)

These are all worthy chores, but they are CHORES. In addition, I need to clean house. My house looks like a cyclone hit it with all the clutter. When I came in from NGS (National Genealogical Society) I had to "hit the floor running" (as my mother used to say) and prepare a lecture for my local FHC (Family History Center.) So all the papers I had gathered at NGS ended up on the dining room table along with the books and papers I used to prepare the lecture. My suitcase remains on the bedroom floor, half unpacked; laundry is almost caught up, but sitting in sorted piles waiting for a turn at the washing machine and my to do list is slightly overwhelming.

So...what to do? Why sit down and write my blog of course.

I have given myself a challenge to write my blog every week for the month of June. That's only four posts; I should be able to meet that, right?  But it seems as if every time I have a great blog idea and am moved to write I'm in the middle of one of those pesky chores, and I just can't stop in the middle of cleaning out my file cabinet, can I? Please give me permission.

So even though I had no great insight to write about and no special theme I sat down to start June off right. I considered writing about the lecture I gave last week. I considered writing about how yesterday (Memorial Day) hit me stronger than usual with memories of my dad. I considered writing about Southern California Genealogy Society's up coming Genealogical Jamboree. I even considered just picking an ancestor at random and writing about them. Then I tried signing into my blogger account and was told my blog no longer existed. SAY WHAT?

Is it like when you don't use your muscles....they atrophy? Is that what happened to my blog? I didn't write in it for more than a week and, poof, it's gone? Or did Blogger feel my last post was too controversial and wiped me out? Did some hacker pick me at random and banish all my hard work? No...just a computer glitch. All is well. Whew.

But it made me realize a couple of things. Number One, how important my blog has become to me and Number Two, how irritated I become when things don't work the way they are supposed to, and Number Three, just how much I don't want to clean up my files.

But, I've started June out right...I wrote my blog.