A Bit of Spring Cleaning

Playing around with templates, colors and fonts
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net ID-10064305

It is pretty embarrassing to realize that I have not spent any time at my blog in the past eleven months. Where have I been and what have I been doing? 

• I spend time co-moderating the Legacy Virtual Users' Group Community on Google+. I find that I enjoy the give and take at the Community and the immediacy of comments among the members. The monthly hangouts on Google+ are also a great way to interact with other genealogists and discuss our software database program.  
• I have been pretty involved with the Guild of One-Name Studies both as the registered researcher of the Keough surname and as the regional representative for the USA West region members.
• I decided to follow through on some research that I started in 2009 and registered my one-place study for Plate Cove East, Newfoundland with the recently formed Society for One-Place Studies. I also serve as the newsletter editor for the Society. 

Hmmm, when I came back to my blog after working on projects like newsletters, brochures, posters, journal articles, blog posts, and video presentations for the for those groups, I noticed how stale my own blog was. Perhaps I had not spent time blogging because I no longer liked the look of my blog or felt that it was a good use of my limited time to spend on research. It was clearly time to make a few decisions about this blog. Did I want to continue with my personal family history blog and, if so, what would I need to do to freshen things up and commit to a regular schedule of blogging?

After giving the entire personal blogging situation some serious thought, I made a few decisions:

1. I want and need to blog about my family's history and my personal genealogy research. I am the keeper of the facts and stories about my family. The only way I am going to get the word out and find those cousins is with my Keough Corner blog. The best connections I have made to date have come from my blog so why am I not taking advantage of this free and robust megaphone that is my blog (I feel a Gibbs slap coming at me!).
2. I need to spend the time going through my template, layout and pages and simplify the look of my blog, focus on the areas that interest me and that I can make a contribution, and commit to writing at least once a week. When I have several deadlines, somehow I get things done. When I don't give myself deadlines, eleven months goes by without a blog post - unacceptable!
3. This is not brain surgery - just write (and spell-check and edit). 
4. Pick something easy to help me get back into the swing of things - starting next week I will post a birthdays and anniversaries calendar on a weekly basis and follow that up with a little bit of the story of those family members.

So I spent a bit of time this weekend switching things out (the theme and page layout), revising some pages and adding a few more. I still have some work to do on the Keough Corner but so far, I like the changes. Let me know what you think and tell me how you find the inspiration to post on a regular basis. See you next week. 

Tessa