Noteworthy Reads Revisited

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Despite my New Year’s intentions, it turns out I can’t quit doing the Noteworthy Reads posts. I’m addicted to doing them. I caught up on all of my blog-reading over the past few days and found myself bookmarking blog posts that I just had to share! Except that there’s a limit on how many I can share with friends on Facebook since many of my friends are not into genealogy. I started thinking that I would miss sharing the interesting articles I found on my blog. This led to wondering whether I really had to stop doing posting the Noteworthy Reads; which led to me considering how I would do it if I did continue to write them. This was just one step away from deciding that I was going to feel better if I continue to write them.

Moreover, I found out that quite a few people like the Noteworthy Reads posts and were sorry to see them go. A few people suggested that that doing shorter Noteworthy Reads post would be easier. I can see where that would seem to be a good idea, but, in actuality, that’s not how it works. I read the same number of blog posts either way. In the past four or five days, I got all caught up, having gotten behind during Christmas the Christmas break and the beginning of January; I read or skimmed approximately 2000 posts (do you all have to be so prolific?) and bookmarked articles I really wanted share as I read. Before writing a Noteworthy Reads post I go back over everything that I bookmarked and determine which ones are the best to include – deciding which of a bunch on the same subject is the best written for my audience, which explains something the best, which I now find the most interesting as some may have hit the mainstream media since I bookmarked it and there’s no need to post it if everyone knows about it, etc. If I was going to do a shorter post I would have to be far more stringent in my choosing, which would take more time. [I once told a boss who wanted something written quickly (within two hours) succinctly and well, that he could have written quickly or succinctly, but not both. I tend to write long. If what I have produced is relatively short, I had time to edit. Good editing occasionally takes longer than writing the original, as it requires more strategic thought.]So having decided that I will be writing more Noteworthy Reads posts, I also decided that the posts will likely be as long as they were before, containing quite a few links. However, I decided to only commit to putting up the Noteworthy Reads posts up sporadically, not on a set schedule.

I realize that stating that the Noteworthy Reads posts will go up sporadically is not good business sense as it makes it difficult for readers to predict when they will be posted. However, this blog is a hobby, not a business; and, it’s only going to be a hobby as long as it is still fun. The Noteworthy Reads posts may end up going up fairly regularly, but to say at the outset that they will go up sporadically is a psychological trick on myself since if there is no deadline I am not stressed by not making it or staying up all night in order to make it. So with any luck, the next Noteworthy Reads post will go up sometime in the next five or six days.

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In other updates, I didn’t get much genealogy research done this week because I worked late most nights and the night that I did not, I had a church meeting in the evening. On this nice long weekend I just had, I found myself doing more organizing than research, as well as chasing down things to photograph for my Instagram 365 project. I don’t mean to say that I was organizing the research itself, but I was organizing the space in which I do the research as I find I get very little done in a place that looks like it’s drowning in paper. On my last move. I downsized to a one-bedroom apartment, and my office is my living room couch. I seemed to have grown piles of paper all around one end of the couch because I didn’t have a readily accessible place to put them. This weekend I found a small stack of drawers that look like huge books that I bought and placed beside the bookcases, and into which I’m putting the documents that I took from my parents on my last visit and the items in emails from distant cousin connections that I want to check out or verify someday in the future. The area looks much neater. I’m really looking forward to starting work to work there (but I have another church meeting tomorrow night).