Each year I do a “report card” review of my goals for the year. In the report card posts, I review the old goals and make new ones. This year I think I’m going to claim the Butterfly Effect over all my projects. The concept of the Butterfly Effect is that when a butterfly flutters her wings, it creates a tiny change in the atmosphere. That tiny change carries the possibility of altering the path of, or maybe even preventing, a tornado. In other words, small changes can create large results. 2024 will, I hope, be a year that tiny changes will create big results.

2023 Goals in Review

Last year my plan was “simple and uncrowded”. 2023 was anything but “simple and uncrowded”. It was off the rails crazy! Probably the weirdest, craziest year we’ve had in a decade. We were blessed with a new grandchild, said our final goodbyes to way too many family members, welcomed a son-in-law to the family, had seemingly endless job problems, and I wrote 2 novels. Yes – two. You read that correctly! Rough drafts of books 2 and 3 of my children’s series have been completed. I attempted to edit book 1 on my own and found it was just too much with everything else that was going on so as a Christmas present to myself, I hired a book coach to help me edit book 1 so I can hopefully get it published in 2024. The books do have a genealogical component so, while you didn’t see a lot from me in the way of new genealogy blog posts, I was writing like crazy outside of the blog and using my family history that way.

The goals for 2023 were:

• Self-education at the rate of one training per month with a different topic each quarter;
• Organization of all the 36 years (!!!) of genealogical data I’ve collected;
• Writing: 1 blog post per month plus editing/publishing book 1 and writing book 2
• Focus Family: William & Hester (MITCHELL) DRAKE.

Goal 1: Self-Education

I didn’t actually keep track of all the trainings I did so I can’t say whether I met that goal or not but I did do a lot of self-education throughout the year. I’m going to go ahead and at least give myself a C/Average on that one.

Goal 2: Organization

F/Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. I did not organize at all!

Goal 3: Writing

I’m giving myself an A/Above Average on this one. I just squeaked in at 12 (mostly) genealogy blog posts. Although my blog posts suffered, I was able to partially edit book 1 and write rough drafts of books 2 and 3. That’s an amazing amount of progress and the books do involve my family history so I’m counting them. I’d say I made exceptional progress on this goal. Hopefully in 2024, I can make progress on both the blog AND the books.

Goal 4: Focus Family

I am not sure I researched William and Hester (MITCHELL) DRAKE at all this year. If I did, I must not have found anything terribly exciting or I would have shared it with you and would likely remember what I found. I’m coming up blank on this one so either I did not work on this goal at all, or I made zero progress. So, I guess it’s an F/Fail on this one.

2024

So there you have it, 2023 in a nutshell. Here’s hoping that 2024 will be calmer (not likely since it’s an election year) and more productive in a variety of areas. My new goals are:

• Self-education: I like this goal so I’m keeping it. I love learning new things.
• Organization: Ever the hopeful person, I’m keeping this one too. This will be one of my tiny changes that, I hope, will create big results.
• Writing: My goal this year will remain 12 blog posts plus I plan to edit and publish books 1 and 2 and (if I’m very lucky) book 3. I’ll also be writing a rough draft of book 4.
• Focus Family: My focus this year will be split between two families, both of which appear in the books I’m writing. Family 1: Jefferson LATTY. Family 2: William RITER and his dad, Nicholas.) Since I will be researching both of these families for upcoming books in my children’s time travel series, I will be more likely to actually work on the families.

Wishing You a…

I’m wishing you all a calm and peaceful 2024. A year with no loss of family. A year with beautiful additions to your family. A year with much love, peace, and joy for you.

Peace & Love,

Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog