Giving It Another Try

Astute readers of this blog (assuming I have any readers left at all) will have realized that I gave up on this year's 52 Ancestors challenge early on, after only eight posts in the series. I decided I was spending more time trying to come up with something to fit the prompts than actually writing about my ancesters – which is, after all, the whole point.

So, I took an extended hiatus devoted to sorting, digitizing, and purging the extensive paper genealogical files I inherited from my brother. The process isn't finished yet, but the boxes of files cluttering my garage are many pounds lighter and considerably more compact than they were a few months ago. (My hard drive, on the other hand, is virtually groaning under the digital weight of so many gigabytes of new files.) Too, in the course of the endeavor, I ran across quite a few documents and research notes that had hitherto escaped my notice, providing fresh grist for my research mill.

Thus refreshed, I'm preparing to dive back into 52 Ancestors, sans prompts, just writing about my forebears and collateral kin as I feel inclined. Can I possibly catch up, after these months of inaction, to produce another 44 posts by the end of the year? My calendar and calculator tell me that's about 2.6 posts per week. Ambitious, maybe, but I'm going to give it a shot.