genealogy

travelin' oma assignment number sixteen

the older i become, the more interested i am in genealogy work. i think this is probably a common thing. the older we get, the more we realize that we are shaped by not only our own past, but also the past of those that got us here. we realize that our personalities are more affected by genetics than we realized as kids and become curious about which of our ancestors we have similar characteristics to. we start to seek wisdom from those who have gone before us as we face more difficult circumstances in life and turn to journal accounts or oral histories to find that wisdom. hopefully we also seek it from relatives with more wisdom than us that are still alive.

i have some great things to learn from my ancestors. my linford grandparents are diligent genealogists and have compiled a lot of our family's history. they published a wonderful book on my great grandparents and i finally read it last year. i discovered many of the things that i talked about in the previous paragraph by reading about their lives. other branches of my family tree still wait to be researched and have wisdom gleaned from. randy's side of the family has some complex record issues that are going to take some real time and effort to sort through and find, but we are both anxious to find information about those ancestors.

learning more about my family history is a bug that i have just recently caught, but i know that there are a lot of practical skills that i need to learn and develop before i can really effectively do some of the research that i need to. and that is a little discouraging. especially given time constraints. hopefully i can push through some of that and at least do some small things to begin my lifelong pursuit of family history so that i'm not eighty by the time i finally get around to it and someone is trying to interview me for my own personal history before i pass on. baby steps.