After
my shift yesterday I decided to head into the office and attempt to do some
cleaning. As you may remember, we did a significant reorganization and a little
bit of cleaning about a month ago but there were some things that we have kept
putting off. As much as I hate doing it, it was time to get things cleaned off
my desk and organized.
Much
of the cleaning and organizing had to do with all the papers and files that
have been slowly accumulating over the past several months. I must have had an
entire tree blanketing all the surfaces in the small room. In my opinion, is
the worst kind of cleaning because you have to go through every document, sort
them, and shred anything with sensitive information on it.
The
truly astounding part of this endeavor is just how much stuff there is strewn
about. For me, paper seems to epitomize the 10 in 5 mystery in that you wonder
how ten pounds of crap can fit into a space that should only be able to hold
five. It was a seemingly never ending task that had me, time and again, asking
why I had kept all this stuff.
At
the same time, I did come across a lot of things that I had long since
forgotten about. Acceptance letters, testing scores, old flyers from readings,
photographs I had taken, and endorsements. However, what were of greatest value
to me were the papers that I had misplaced before I could add them to my
genealogy binders. Namely copies of a few obituaries, a couple of family
photos, and my conversion documents.
My
conversion file in particular reminded me of an important part and commonly overlooked
aspect of family tree building. All too often, amateur genealogists such as
myself get tunnel vision and focus solely on the past. One of the worst things
we can do is fail to color the leaf which we occupy on the tree. We have to
remember that we are both story tellers and part of the story.
This
omission is bad enough but what is infinitely worse is the failure to simply
look around. Talk to the family that you have not just for what they can
provide with regard to previous generations but for their stories as well. The
work that you are doing now is great for the present but infinitely more
important for the future generations of the family.
Lastly,
the overarching reminder that yesterday provided me with was that whether you
are researching your family or some other topic be organized. You are always
going to be collecting more documents, more photographs, more books, and more
stories and you need to have a place to put them where they can be retrieved
easily. It was hard enough to find it once, don’t make yourself have to find it
again.
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