Rumours of my dropout, disappearance,
or death have probably been gravely overestimated. After all, the
blog name is right there in your face should you actually look for
it. The name was hastily chosen with no forethought whatsoever when a
techno-terrific offspring created it for me upon departure for the
airport never to be seen again. And ~ woe ~ leaving moi to my own
meagre devices.
Just think, if I'd had more
techno-smarts I wouldn't be stuck with boring eponymous blogger me. I
could have called it DyingfromBirth.com©
(... It's taken. By me). Or changed it to
BalticandCelticConnections. So many bloggers have created
clever blog titles. After eight years, it's a little late to change,
I'm thinking. Eight years of scribbling, hard to believe because it
seems like forever. Didn't blogging always exist? So why does
everything takes twice as long to do now.
A blogiversary is a customary time for
review. The past year, blog-wise, was interesting, as always. I
persevered with The Book of Me until me felt boringly
over-exposed ―
absolutely no reflection on Julie's series and all who stayed the
course into a new year. My blog
is primarily a record of research tales. If my experience in
researching, methodology, problem analysis, or the occasional whimsy
benefits anyone in the broad genealogical community, all the better.
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Ongoing problems encountered in my
FRASER family history
were painfully articulated and aired, only to spawn further problems,
similar to the way fruit flies breed. Not only that, I lack a firm
grip on autosomal DNA
(why does it have to have all those SNP numbers - stop snickering) never mind the forthcoming Y-DNA
results about to scare the pants off me.
End of blog review, especially since
I've used the word boring twice already. Otherwise:
Leaving comments on a blog post has
become pretty well passé
(therefore all the more appreciated). The trend is to notify a
thousand friends on social media when a new post is up to collect
likes
and Internet-generated statistics. Numbers
again,
eh? The process
reminds me of how many of my old
real friends have the gall
discipline to avoid Facebook and Google+ altogether.
On a different tack, disaster of sorts
struck in the late fall. The print-on-demand outfit I used for
several family history books had a kind of mid-life crisis, reverting
to its Belgian origins as best as I and my equally-impacted friend
Elayne can figure. It's complicated; but bottom line, we have to take
time from the writing and editing to shop around (trying not to
despair over complex formatting issues.)
This genealogy blog is not the only one
I write, as some know. I've reviewed countless books for three years,
mainly crime novels but also notable new fiction, on an
inappropriately-named blog (one senses rightly I have a blog-naming
disorder.) My personal Famdamily failed to produce the
expected fodder for satire, although luckily other surroundings did.
But my favourite pet is
CamelDabbleTravelBabble, a title I managed to nail. It
consumes pleasant time when I am in this country reminding me of
other parts of the world. I know ~ it's hit and miss sometimes
~ but more fun than (and relief from) genealogical proof
arguments. It is my sincere hope that I never run out of topics
there.
©
2015
Brenda Dougall Merriman
