Category Archives: Accountability

I Have A Lot Of Books To Read

I don’t usually share this kind of thing online, but I decided to write it up anyway. You see, I hadn’t read a book in years.

Oh, I read a lot. I read news online, blogs, genealogy magazines and journals. I’ve even read some books on Kindle, though I tend to skim those.

But I hadn’t read a physical book that was sitting on my shelf for years. I’ve lost interest in some of what I had and had gotten rid of them without ever reading them. But I still have plenty left.

So I decided it was time to read books again. I set a goal for twelve books in 2019, one per month. The last book I can remember reading was pretty long and it took me a month, one chapter per night.

I read eleven. I failed. Somehow I stopped sometime around the summer and took a while to start up again. But I’m proud of those eleven. I even rushed to get one more in since I started writing this post about ten days ago, and finished it a few minutes ago.

2019 Books

I read two genealogy books, or rather one genealogy and one genealogy-ish. Two books were about Utah. Three were from the shelf of books I’d kept back to junior high school that I loved and wanted to read again. (I didn’t love them as much the second time as an adult though; they’ll be donated now.) One was actually a lecture, but it was bound like a book and I got it from the free book sale at the library, so it counts. Several of the books were chosen deliberately for being easier reads. They were still books in my house that I needed to read, so they count just like the others.

In any case, I finally read some of the books in my house and getting myself doing that again was the ultimate goal more than the count. I have a lot more to go. Since I didn’t hit my goal, I think I’ll set the same goal, but in the hopes that I read more than twelve, next year.

Happy New Year!

January Goals Review

What were my goals for this year? I think I’ve already forgotten some.

1. Haven’t gone to Europe yet.

2. I got back into re-organizing all my documents. Scanfest kick-started that at the end of the month and then I did a little more.

3. Didn’t add the pictures yet to my new family web site.

4. I don’t know if I blogged more, but I blogged a few times. I think that counts.

And then the ones that aren’t numbered the same, just to make these reviews more complicated. Thus, I’m re-numbering for these goal reviews.

5. My inbox count is still in the 30s. The only emails being procrastinated on are the really, really old ones. Well, mostly.

6. I invoiced my web development clients. I haven’t had a lot of genealogy work this month, so I’m not really behind on that by much.

7. I started the indexing of the pages I’ve had for months. I don’t think these particular pages are good for me, but the person in charge hasn’t responded yet. They look almost like Russian language revision lists, but there is so much in the comments that I won’t even pretend to be able to read, that maybe someone else should do them.

I think that’s not a bad month on my goals. I spent a lot of the time writing a new program for the RootsTech developer’s challenge. The rules said to come up with something new, but the finalists look like they’ve all been around for a while. One is based on a web site that’s a few years old; at least two were already on the schedule to speak about their programs. From the others that I was able to find something about, I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the entries were pre-programmed. Seems that I read a rule that no one else followed. Looking back, it was kind of vague that it had to be newly written. But between that and the official blogger incident (being asked to be one during the last conference, but then not asked for this year, and not even the courtesy of a return email), I’m still annoyed at them. At least I already know that I attend genealogy conferences more for the people than the conference itself, and had a good time yesterday with some of them already. On to another month.

Genealogy Goals For 2012

This seems to be a common genealogy blog topic, so here’s my go. I didn’t do goals for last year, so I can’t judge them.

In 2011, I made my business paperless by using Android. I tried previously with my PDA but it didn’t work. I finally finished scanning all the family photos that had been given to me years ago and I organized all my photos on my computer. I began re-organizing all my genealogy documents, but only got part way when I switched to the photos. At the beginning of the year, I reprogrammed my family web site, but now I need to add the photos back in. Since they’re organized, it should be easier, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.

And that brings me to my goals for 2012.

1. Go to Europe.

The IAJGS conference is in Paris in 2012. However, it’s losing it’s appeal to me for a few reasons. A cousin of mine is going to Poland and has arranged for a day tour of our ancestral town. It is almost exactly one month before the conference, so to go to both, I’d have to stay in Europe for over a month or fly home and back in the same month. Both options are not appealing to me. But if I skip the conference, I can easily plan for a June trip.

2. Organize my documents.

I started this in 2011. Then my cousin asked about pictures on the web site and I switched to organizing those, which I finished. Now I have to get back to the documents, making sure everything has a good digital copy and is sourced better in my program.

3. Get pictures on the family web site.

I finished organizing them. Now I have to write the programming to link them up to the database and then get them on the web site.

4. Blog more.

I’ve had some busy times, then some slow times. Also, I started another blog to post a picture a day. It started really well, but December was terrible and I skipped days all over the place. There will also be a new society blog for me to keep up with very soon. Also, don’t leave off Nitpicker’s Versions of WDYTYA episodes until the next season starts. Again. Yes, I know I still have one more to do.

Business Goals

1. Don’t procrastinate emails.

I end up taking upwards of an hour sometimes to answer an initial genealogy inquiry, so I tend to procrastinate on those. Like my photo blog, it got much worse in December. I had 100 near the end of the year. I have less than 30 now in my inbox, and still several that need answering. But at least none are a month old anymore.

2. Invoice better.

This also includes for my web development business.

I have some other smaller things, but they fall in line with not procrastinating emails and updating my family web site. I did improve on some things last year, so now I get another chance to improve even more.

Also, just writing this blog post means I’m blogging more, right? :-)

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Late addition: Index more.

I forgot about this one. (Kind of like I keep forgetting to index the pages I already have?) I’m part of one indexing project and I haven’t been doing much lately. I need to finish the pages I’ve got and do more. I also want to get my society indexing, so I assume I’ll be doing at least some of that too.