This is not a farewell post!

I have to go to work on Monday, for the first time in over a year. I've been on unpaid maternity leave. Although my return to work helps our household income, it will cut the already limited time I have for genealogy.

I've been thinking about how I spend my time, and what I would like to achieve. There's a mismatch between the two. I know I spend too much time flitting from thing to thing. I've blogged about that before, but not actually done anything about it. Yes, I've kept occupied, and it's been interesting, but it has not moved me towards a family history on even a branch of my tree.

Knowing how much more limited my time will be has helped me to make a decision... I am going to concentrate on Elizabeth TREGONNING (1858-1952).

What's more, I am going to plan both my research, and how I spend my time. When I get - no, make - time for genealogy, I will follow my plan. I'll allow myself a little 'unstructured' genealogy time as well. After all, I do this for fun! But I will not change my mind about where my main focus is, or how most of my time should be spent.

Next time - Why I picked Elizabeth TREGONNING.

Staying focused... or not

How do you stay focused on your research?

I struggle with it. It's all the genealogy related stuff available on the internet that gets me. I'm constantly trying out demo versions of this, or checking out new databases of that, or following interesting discussions about the other. I tell myself it will ultimately help me because I'll know exactly the source and tool to use for anything. I'll have the most beautiful and useful charts, maps and timelines. My research will be comprehensively researched and carefully documented. The time I spend playing with these things is time well spent!

I'm kidding myself, and I know it.

My latest distraction (aside from Twitter and blogging, which I still say is to help me focus) is the current offer from World Vital Records for a few days of free access. I always intended to have a look at the site... sometime. It has all those Victorian government and police gazettes. There could be some really interesting, juicy stuff in there that I never knew about before.

The trouble is, I'm not really ready to look at it just yet. All I'll be doing is picking out names from my tree and typing them in to see if anything comes up. Not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily. It's just that I keep on telling myself that I want to focus on some aspect of my tree and research it properly. That may include getting onto the site, or it may not.

I could just ignore the offer and pretend I never saw it... No, I couldn't... I already signed up a few days ago. Curse you World Vital Records, with your interesting free offer!!

So right now I'm about to start typing names into the website and see what pops out. I'll let you know how it works out in a few days!