Yesterday I started working in my junk room. You know the room I'm talking about. We all have one. If not a whole room, an area where we shove papers and pictures into a box or several boxes to sort through "some day."
For me, "some day" is now.
When I looked at it as going through the junk room, it was hard to face. The motivation wasn't there.
After opening the first box, I realized it wasn't a junk room.
What I'm doing is sorting through tomorrow's family history. The boxes contain information about the life I'm living today, lived yesterday and have yet to live. It contains information about my husband. Our children. Our immediate family.
If I, the family historian, can't be bothered to preserve this treasure trove pertaining to my own family, with love and respect, how can I expect the future family historian to do so?
It's so easy to get wrapped up in discovering all the information we can find about our relatives from a hundred , two hundred, even three hundred years ago. We also need to take time to get lost in the discovery of documents, photographs and memories of are living family.
Don't let the junk area scare you. Embrace it and start sorting through tomorrow's family history. Make it easy on the next family historian. Will it be your own child who takes over? Will it be a grandchild? A great grandchild? A great, great grandchild? We don't know who will follow in our tracks.
I doubt if my mother suspected I would be the one to pick up where she left off. But someone will. It might take a few generations before one of your direct descendants goes searching, but if we keep our current family stories alive through careful recording, when that direct descendant of yours comes along, they will find a gold mine.
But only if you preserve the information today.
It's fun. It's different. Instead of wondering what it was like, you are preserving the information that you know first hand what it was like. This is where you can leave your mark in history.
Embrace this opportunity.
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