I'm back... and I have a plan

Well, my genealogy research burnout had a much longer impact than I had anticipated. But a stress-free Thanksgiving and West Caribbean cruise have given me a much-needed rest.

I've indulged in many of my other interests; painting, learning about digital photography, aquiring new and improved household cleaning products (loving the Swiffer Wet Jet!), and even collected a few more tidbits for my genealogy research.

I realize the key is to pace myself so I don't find myself chasing dead-ends for days at a time. And I really need to focus on organizing the data I already have.

My plan is to spend one or two days a week working only on organization. I'll need to test out several genealogy programs for the computer and decide which is most suited to my needs. Then move on to data entry.

I know the hardest part will be when I get to the data entry, because I'm going to want to go chasing down ancestral siblings I have limited information on. But I will try to just stick to entering everything I already have first.

And try not to be too intimidated by formulating source citations. Yes, I'll go back and reread Citing Your Sources Can Be Fun. I can do this. I will do this.

Research burnout: The inevitable consequence of the undiscipled approach

Photo by Oliver Kendal @ Flickr

As the 12 subscribers to Sifting Through the Past may (or may not) have noticed, I have not written a blog post in some weeks. This is for two reasons; 1. I went on a two-week smash-and-grab hunt for documentation on a particularly interesting ancestor, and 2. I was so burned out on genealogy research afterward that my brain hurt every time my thoughts drifted to the topic.
If there is any lesson in this, I suppose it would be, "Don't do as I do." Or, do. Unless you are in the middle of professional genealogy research for a client, I don't really see the harm in taking an extended break from it after an intensive period of non-stop overexposure to your family history.

So, after a couple of weeks spent doing little more than recovering from my genealogy bender by putting the house back in order, reading dystopian fiction, and playing some old-school SimCity 2000, my brain is no longer threatening to melt at the thought of genealogy.

I even managed to resume my column at The Examiner this morning with a budget genealogy post about the Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspaper Digital Archive (the very resource that kicked off this documentation spree in the first place). Next week I plan to post here and there about the other resources that fueled my family history frenzy, and maybe a bit of what I found.

But for now, I have a couple of more loads of laundry to finish, and some chicken to toss in the slow cooker.