I typically do a “report card” post at the end of each year to see if I met any of my goals or not and to set new goals for the new year. It looks like in 2019 my last post was about Y2K. Hindsight says it was an appropriate post heading into the disaster that was 2020. Hopefully 2021 will improve.

So, let’s roll on back to the 2018 report card and see what happened there. Life is considerably different now. My daughter found her own place and moved out quite some time ago- maybe the summer after the 2018 post was written. By mid-2019 when she moved out, things were still busy and then Covid hit in early 2020. Rather than writing during Covid, I did more research and learning and less writing. Overall numbers- in 2018 I wrote 53 blog posts (phenomenal!). In 2019, I wrote 15 posts but also got all my old blog posts moved over to WordPress- a definite win. In 2020 I wrote 9 posts, 2 of which were for other people outside of my family and 1 of which is not public for reasons I won’t go into here. I’ll take those 9 posts as a win given all we’ve been through during 2020, not to mention the fact that the first 6 months of the year I spent a lot of time learning how to interpret my DNA results which helped a lot through the rest of 2020 and will continue to help into the future. In addition to the blog, I’ve begun offering my services to write stories for other people’s families as a small side business. I’ve done two stories for others so far and have another in the works right now. I’m pretty pleased with how that venture is going.

It looks like I had someone lined up to possibly write a guest post in 2018. I have no idea who that was and the person never wrote the post or I would have certainly passed it along to you. That’s unfortunate. I always enjoy it when others write stories for the blog. I can see in the 2018 post that I planned on using 2019 to unpack and organize records. I did do fairly well with that although there is much left to do in that regard. I’d say I did enough to make it a win in 2019. As far as 2020 goes, I feel like any progress was a win for the disastrous 2020 year. The 9 posts and extensive research I did count as a win in my book.

Looking forward to 2021, I’ll set my goals as follows:

1. Continue unpacking and organizing: I’ll continue doing what I started in 2018 and just try to get everything unpacked and sorted out. Pictures and documents also need to be preserved.
2. Commit to writing at least 12 blog posts. I’ll be utilizing Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks most likely but will also utilize Genealogy Photo A Day on Instagram for additional inspiration when needed. Sometimes I find plenty of inspiration in what I’m currently researching so I’ll let that guide me as well.
3. Ancestral focus: Nicholas REITER (again- yes. His line is the shortest because I can’t seem to get anywhere with it.)

I’m keeping 2021 simple and uncrowded. I think for this year that will work best. We’re heading into uncertain times with the presidential election uproar. I prefer to meet the goals I set so I’m keeping it simple. Also, my childhood best friend just moved back to the area this week and I’m looking forward to having future adventures with her.

I wish you love, success, and happiness in 2021. Happy New Year!

Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog

Header image is courtesy of Jude Beck and can be found at Unsplash.