Records

Obviously, I’ve totally neglected this blog over the last few months. And it isn’t the first time.

Honestly, on one hand, I don’t care one iota about blogging. I definitely don’t consider myself a “blogger” like some people do. I’m not interested in trying to promote my blog, getting a bunch of followers, or becoming well known. I don’t want a social media presence.

I’m not good at taking pictures for my posts. Or when I do take pictures, they sit on my camera and the posts never get written. You wouldn’t believe how many pictures are on my SD card that I took only because I intended to write a blog post. Years ago.

I don’t get up early in the morning. I rarely get up before my kids do. I do things family-related all day – cook, clean, teach the kids, work-on-the-computer-for-pay, talk to Jon, etc.

I rarely stay up later than the kids do either. I help put them to bed, and then I go to bed. I have enough trouble getting up in the morning without staying up late.

Blogging – when?

Any time that I take to write a blog post takes away from time I could be cleaning up . . . after all, housework is the easiest thing to neglect.

Where am I going with this? I don’t know.

I used to want my blog to be an uplifting place for other homeschool moms to visit. I didn’t want to say anything unseemly or negative. Maybe I figured out that I didn’t have that much positive-encouraging to say.

I like to write, an interest I first discovered when I was 11. And I think I’m a pretty good writer. Yet I also think I’m a mediocre writer. I read some blogs that draw me and conjour up so many emotions and motivate me to action.

My blog does not do that.

I’m ready to stop being a perfectionist in my blog-writing.

I am intensely interested in my family genealogy. I sometimes spend time searching census records, death certificates, and birth records. I know so many names of people whose blood I share . . .

• Ann Adkins Kinder
• Burton Sternberger Counts
• Nancy Elizabeth Shumaker Crawford
• Francis Marion Reveal
• Martha Elizabeth Hoover Hanshaw
• Houston Estel Snodgrass

. . . just to name a few.

Yet I know almost nothing about those people.

A fellow genealogist and very distant cousin sent me a scanned photo of Ann Kinder (which melted my heart since I had known her name almost my entire life but had never seen her face until that day), and I’ve seen her headstone at Kinder Cemetery. (Though I couldn’t find it last time I visited there.) I have never been able to find Ann in any census records before she was married. I’ve never been able to find a birth or death record for her and have no idea who her parents were.

I know that Burton’s in-laws looked down on him and that he drank too much. I know that my grandmother, his daughter, hid from him in fear sometimes. I wish I knew something good about him. I have also seen his headstone many times, and I have a few pictures of him.

I was told that Nancy Crawford could argue with a door post, and I’ve wondered if I take after her. I saw her death certificate recently and realized that she died at age 98. I laughed and told Jon, “That mean old woman wouldn’t even die!” I wish I knew something good about her. I have a picture of her, but almost everyone looks mean in those old pictures.

I know that Francis Reveal was a very skillful bricklayer and was rather well-known in Charleston, WV, during his time. That family was well-respected. I have not heard anything bad about him. I don’t have any pictures of him, but I think I saw his headstone a few years ago.

I know virtually nothing about Houston Snodgrass other than his name and vital info.

And so a post about why I do or do not blog has turned into a post about my family tree.

What’s my point? I would like my blog here to stand as some of record or testament of my own family, who we are, what we do, what we enjoy. Our positive traits and our failures. I would prefer not to have my great-grandchildren know nothing more about me than that I argue eloquently.

And so I will try again.

© 2012, Cindy. All rights reserved.