Motivation Monday – February Week 2/6

Last week, I laid out my goals for the month of February and it seems that I am making progress.  Here is what I would like to accomplish this month and what I have completed so far.

Research: To put together a spreadsheet in Numbers (it’s a Mac spreadsheet program) to follow to great-great grandparents and their children through the census records. Once I have completed this for each of the families I will begin to form a research plan based on what I have and do not have, I will be doing this is Growly Notes to clearly label what my next step is and what my findings are as I go through the process. While setting these steps up, it is important to advise that my Ancestry subscription is up within a few days and I will not renew it right away.

I have pulled all the information into the spreadsheets for each family and have also marked what I am missing. For some of the information, I have already searched on Ancestry.com to find the missing census records. I started going through all of my research on the Richmond family and notating what I have and need to do next in Growly Notes, I need to continue this process for each family until all information has been added and a clear research plan is written. I received a 14 day trial membership to Ancestry with the purchase of FTM for Mac 2, so I have about a week left to do this before I need to start heading to the library to do my research.

Writing: I need to write some posts for my blog that will be prescheduled to publish. In Nov and Dec, I had so many obituaries set to publish through January. It was nice to have that buffer of posts going out and not having to think about what I will write for the current week. I have printed out the editorial calendar from Geneabloggers and will utilize that to help me get ahead. I have already gone through it and highlighted the posts I would like to write. Now, I just need to get writing.

So far, I have no posts planned ahead for my blog. I decided yesterday that I needed to create a calendar and really put my information into it. I have added the mundane, normal life stuff like driving my daughter to school and her other activities, as well as the time I need to check social media and reply to emails. For today, this has really worked. I am keeping to everything I have scheduled and maybe finishing up a few minutes early to move on to the next task. 

Anyhow, I have scheduled an hour of writing time  for Monday – Friday with hopes that this will get some post pre-written and ready to go. I have not added the bloggers editorial calendar to this because I do not want to over kill my calendar.  I do have it printed and will be consulting it as I write daily.

Organization: I pulled down about 98% of my genealogy related books and magazines into my office already, which was my goal for January. So, I would like to find the few pieces I am missing to complete this part of my goal. I also will start organizing my desk, between my genealogy and travel it’s a mess. Need to get it together so that working in either field will be more efficient for me.

Only thing organizational I have done this last week is creating the calendar I mentioned above. The desk is the next step.

Education: February 1st starts ProGen 15 for me and a few of my other genealogy friends. You can bet we will be writing about our experience and learnings on this. Need to get to my Chicago Public Library to pick up a copy of Professional Genealogy which I will use until I purchase my copy.  From what I have read ahead of time, we will need to put about 20 hours a month towards this class that lasts 18 months.

ProGen started on 1 Feb and I was so excited. I have decided that I  will read the assignment when it is given and then again right before our monthly chat session. So, on 1 Feb I completed my reading assignment. I need to write out the citations we received and write a mission statement for my (future) business. Last night was our first group chat and it was great. I think we have a great group of people that we will be working with and many of them are bloggers. I have already signed up to follow each of their blogs and followed those who are twitter and finally friended those I could find on Facebook (sounds like I am a stalker). I am really excited about this journey we are all taking. 

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