I’ve been trying to make preparations for my new beginnings here at Beyond Fiction. Over the next few weeks I will begin unpacking my research, which has been packed up for almost 2 years now. It’s going to be a long process but I plan on sharing my progress with you as I do it.

Perhaps by re-organizing my research, I will be able to update my blog also. Since I lost a good portion of it a year or so ago, that would make it a little more useful for everyone!

So, bear with me and I will begin posting my progress soon!

Have a great week everyone!

Ken

On March 27, 2007 I started Beyond Fiction. I didn’t know what to expect from it and I really had no big dreams. I just wanted to start a blog that would chronicle my journey and keep my family up to date with my research.

I’ve had lots of ups and downs over the last 4 years. There were the highs when I would be contacted by distant cousins and the lows when I lost everything last summer.

Fortunately, I have survived. My blogging is no longer just something I try to share with my family. It is now a way of writing what I have found and sharing it with everyone. It is a benefit to me to keep in touch with my genea-blogging friends and it is more of a tool for my research than I could have imagined.

I have no aspirations of greatness. I don’t desire to be featured in the Top 40 blogs or whatever. I don’t want that pressure. I simply blog to share my findings with my readers.

I don’t have ads. I don’t have affiliates. I don’t keep up with my stats. That’s not the reason I am here. I am here to offer my writings about my family.

If I have any goals for my blog in the next year, I would have to say that the biggest goal would be to somehow get my actual family members to start reading it. After all, they were the audience it was originally meant for.

I appreciate all the kind comments, suggestions and helpful advice over the last 4 years. I hope that I have somehow returned the favor by writing helpful articles about my family.

OK, now it’s time to go back to real life. I’ve got to go car shopping for a bit!

Have a great Sunday!

Ken

Lately it seems that I come home from work and start one project and the next thing you know I am doing something else, then doing something else. I’m like a jumping bean just going all over the place!

I’ve thought about this. This could be taken as a good thing AND as a bad thing. The bad part is that by jumping back and forth I am not really giving my direct attention to whatever project it is that I am trying to accomplish. I also am making things last a little longer than they should. I know I should be giving my focus to one project and then finishing that before starting something else.

The good part about it is the best part. Having many projects actually works out for the better! I have less chance of getting burnt out on a project and then just dropping it altogether, as I have in the past. Some of the projects I have going right now are tedious, to say the least. Going through all these photos on my hard drive is not always enjoyable! After a while you begin to get tired of searching for duplicates and such and your eyes get wore out from staring at the screen! So, being able to switch to something else is a nice change of pace!

Here are the main projects I have going right now:

• Organizing digital photos on my hard drive
• Building a brand new database in my Family Tree Maker
• Sourcing that database
• Organizing all my sources on my hard drive
• Scanning all the pictures from my huge tote I just sorted through

In the past I have let projects burn me out and, because of that, I have ended up stepping away from my genealogy and my blog. I think the biggest problem was that I was careful to focus on just one project at a time. I really believe that this was what caused the burn out. Lately, having many projects allows me to jump from one to the other and not be burnt out. If I don’t feel like sorting through pictures then I can enter information into my database. If I don’t feel like sourcing my database then I can organize photos.

Of course, I also allow myself time to just step away from it all and play a game or watch some television also!

What do you do to fight your G.A.D.D.?

Ken

Then I decided to open the file. This file contains a good portion of my blog! I don’t know how I could ever get it to put this into my database but, even if it didn’t I could still copy and paste a lot of my old articles!

It starts with my first post on my blog, March 27, 2007, and it was entitled “Beyond Fiction is now open!” and ends with a post entitled “Looking Back….” that was published on Dec. 9, 2008. That’s not a complete summary of my blog but it is almost the first two years of my blog! I was scanning through it and some of my favorite blog posts are in there. A series I did entitled “Dad Loved Dirt Track Racing” which took 5 posts to cover and featured a lot of info about my dad’s love for racing! Several of my Carnival of Genealogy posts are there and even one about my 4th grade teacher!

I’m excited about this find and I hope to perhaps begin sharing some of these old posts with you in the near future. Now if I could only find some backups of the posts from 2009 and 2010!

Have a great day everyone!

Ken

Tonight I decided to begin trying to set up my Google Reader so that I can keep up with my favorite blogs. To my surprise, a lot of the blogs are already there because I signed up for it many moons ago. While scanning through some of them I discovered a nice surprise.

Over at Dear Myrtle, I discovered that Myrt has been writing about getting organized. As a matter of fact, she is offering a PDF download to help you in your organization struggles! That sounds like something I need!

I missed out on January’s Checklist but I still downloaded it and will begin to try to play catch-up with everyone else! I believe this might be just what I need!

If you are having problems getting organized, why not swing over to Dear Myrtle’s blog and check it out for yourself. Here is the link to the two posts for January and February:

2011 January Organization Checklist

2011 February Organization Checklist

I guess I will comply with the idea of posting a picture of your desktop so everyone can see how messed up mine is! Of course, it’s 4:00 in the morning and I don’t have the greatest light but I will turn on the light long enough to take a picture and show everyone how wonderful my desk looks!

Wish me luck everyone!

Have a wonderful day,

Ken

I’m not going to set a lot of lofty goals this year. The simple reason is that I have no idea what to expect this year. My grandson is still fighting his battle with brain cancer, we are still trying to get settled here in North Carolina, my oldest daughter is starting college and there are just too many other things happening right now!

So, what goals will I try to accomplish in 2011? Well, first off, I want to get my website back up and running. Due to my inattention, I let my hosting fees go unpaid and lost all my files. Without any backup, I have had to start over completely. I have a shell of a site up and I have slowly tried to get my blog back up and running but I have so much I still have to do. I know I have a backup of my site somewhere, I just have to find it. If not, I won’t be upset because it will allow me to start afresh and try to set it up a little better than before. You may think that getting this going is going to be easy but not the way I want it to be. I may not even get it completed in this year alone!

Another goal I would like to accomplish is to take the time to organize what I have on my computer. I have so many files that are scattered here and there on several different drives of my computer and I really need to bring some sort of organization to them. I’ve tried in the past and I do have some of them started but I have so much more to accomplish. Once again, this is one of those that I may not get done this year alone.

I’d also like to get my photos organized, both on and off the computer. Moving several times in the last year and a half has caused a lot of my photos to be “misplaced” for lack of a better word. I pulled many of them out of their albums and put them into a crate so that they would not stick together during my first move, which was in the heat of the summer! Now I have to get them all put back in to their albums correctly! I also have “tons” of pictures on my hard drives that need to be organized. I am trying to figure out the best way to do so and also to figure out a naming scheme so that I can keep up with them easier!

You may think that with all that I have stated earlier that I will not have time to do any new research or even post to my blog but, hopefully, that will not be the case. I want so much to be able to get my blog up and running like I did when I first started it back in 2007. With the loss of all my files I shouldn’t have to worry about what to write. I can resort to some of my old posts (which are all in my head now!) and I have plenty of other things I can post besides. I don’t think I could ever go a whole year without doing some sort of research. I just have to figure out the best way to approach my research efforts, that is all.

So, I can take pride in the fact that I am not setting any “definite” goals for this year. That’s the way I like to be. I don’t want to be bogged down trying to accomplish something I set out to do and not have any fun doing it! After all, this is a hobby! Isn’t it?

Have a wonderful day everyone,

Ken

Things have been really busy but I feel they will start to calm down soon, even with the upcoming holidays!

This weekend we were able to unpack a lot of our pictures and get them all put out and also get the girls rooms set up so our place is starting to feel like home now! There is still some things left to do but they will be done here and there as we are able to. Those things that just had to be done are pretty much done now!

So, what’s next? Well, I’m still unpacking my genealogy stuff. All the things I had in my binders have been packed up for over a year now and I have pretty much been going along blindly with my research. Now, I have my sources and other data and can continue with my new family tree and with adding sources as I go!

I’ll try to be more active soon. If you keep up with me on Facebook you would know that I mentioned the other day that I go to work to relax now! My wife has been keeping me pretty busy when I am at home and I’m glad that she has pushed me to get so much done because it has been a long time since we were able to feel at home! It’s nice seeing our life starting to come together again! I hope I never go through another time period of transition as I have in the past 16 months or so! It may sound strange but I’m thankful that I had FarmVille to escape into to help keep me sane during this time.

So, I’ll update you all a little more soon. I still have so many things going right now. I need to start getting my tree published on my web site and I need to continue to try to get my Facebook groups going stronger! I believe unpacking all my research should help get some of my ideas and brainstorming to go better.

Until next time, I wish you all the best of luck in your research, blogging and all other endeavors you may take on!

Have a wonderful week,

Ken

Let’s all be honest with ourselves, we all are guilty of making assumptions about our ancestors. Sometimes it may be because of a newspaper article we read, it may be because of a picture we have found or it could just be because of stories passed down by relatives. How many times have those assumptions hindered your research?

I say what I have said because I am guilty! Sometimes I find myself falling into a very hard trap because of assumptions I have made. I am finding that it is best for me, as a genealogist, to try to explore everything I encounter with an open mind. Not all newspaper reports are accurate, not all family lore is true, pictures do sometimes lie and our relatives were a lot more able than we may think!

Let me give an example. When I first began to do my research on my Stevenson ancestors, all I had was what my Aunt Juanita gave me. I had the letter from Gladys and a few pictures. Sometimes honesty is very hard, but I must be honest to prove my point here! Look at the picture below:

Nettie & Emmit Stevenson

Now, read the letter that was written by my grand-aunt Gladys. There are parts that talk about harvesting the cotton, cooking on the fireplace because there is no stove, and other things that I (confessions are hard) took as making Nettie and Emmit seem to be real hillbillies! My assumption was that I was going to be researching some real “rednecks” in the family. That assumption led me to believe that records would be hard to find.

Now, the truth! As I have been researching, I find that my grand-uncles and grand-aunts were taught how to respect people! They were smart! They were far, far from being “redneck” or “hillbilly” as I assumed. Some of those I have corresponded with via email and such are working in very respectable jobs, have families that make me jealous! After searching and finding my relatives, I often find myself thinking that I am actually the one who would fit into the category I was selecting for my ancestors!

What do you think? Have you ran into this problem in your research? Have you read a newspaper article about a “criminal” in your family but never found the article that said that they were cleared of all those charges? Have you believed stories shared by relatives as family stories but found out that these were actually just lies that were put forth because that person wanted “revenge” for whatever?

I have a quote I want to share with you, it kind of captures what is on my mind today:

The ideal historian goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: “Lazarus, come forth!” and sets him that was dead for ages, blinking and passionate, in the sun.

AUSTIN O’MALLEY, Keystones of Thought

Doesn’t this sound like the way most family historians or genealogists feel? We want to bring our lost loved ones back to life. Essentially, putting them out in the sun for all to see. Shouldn’t we take the time to verify our facts, do our research, and make sure we bring forth the truth and not our assumptions?

I know I am just hitting the surface of this thought. I just wanted to let you know what was on my mind today and I will probably elaborate further upon this in the future.

Have a wonderful day,

Ken

I think the problem that I have run in to is that I have allowed my research to become stale. When you first start out you are so excited about all the new information you are obtaining and you find it easy to blog about just anything. After a few years the information is not as easily obtainable as it was before. I feel that perhaps I have allowed myself to think that I don’t have anything to write about because my research has “dried up” or, at least that is the way it seems to me.

After reflecting upon this for a while, I have come to the conclusion that I simply need to breathe new life into my writing. There was a time that I wrote what was on my heart and how I felt about my research. That made my writing seem real. Lately, I feel I have to write something just to make sure my readers will have something to keep them coming back. It’s not always from the heart. It’s mostly just like reading some boring history book that has no “soul” to it.

So, I am ready to start writing again. What will I write about? Well, after all this reflection, I have come to the conclusion that my ancestors would be more interesting if I tried to bring them to life more. Instead of writing about them moving to this place, why not write what might have prompted that move. When writing about my maternal grandmother, why not write about what it must have been like for her 8 children to see her die at such a young age and why, because of that, most of the Stevenson history has eluded my family for so long. There’s more to write about than just dates and names. Yes, that is what most of genealogy is about but what about the life that our ancestors lived?

In the next few weeks I will begin to revisit some of my past posts on my Stevenson research. Instead of the dull, drab and lifeless posts I have served up I will try to breathe a little life into them by sharing a little more of what might have prompted certain situations and what might have been the fallout of certain situations. I may not always be right but at least some of what I write might stir someone to remembrance of something. It might also help my family to see things in a way that they may have never seen them before.

Am I setting myself up for a fall? Well, if you have followed my writings long enough then you will know that I will probably never be satisfied that I am doing a good enough job. I want to always push for more than what I should be doing. Unfortunately, I have allowed myself to fall into a rut in the last couple of years but I am ready (so ready!!!) to come out of that rut and begin to bring my family research to life.

I thank all my readers who have helped me out along the way. I’m thankful for such a wonderful support group as I have been able to obtain in the last few years.

Here’s wishing you all the best of luck in your research and wishing my family the best of luck in all their endeavors. I ask you all to please be patient as I try to get things together.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the start of the NFL season!!!!

Ken

I’ve been busy with lots of stuff in my life lately and, in the course of being busy, I let my website and blog lapse. I mean that literally. I forgot that I had to pay for my hosting and lost my site! Fortunately I had registered my domain name until 2012!

So, instead of dwelling on the negative aspects of losing everything I would like to dwell on the positive aspects! I now have an excuse for a fresh start! I’ve just recently been able to finally move all my stuff out of storage and now can start going through all my genealogy I had packed. It’s a chance to look at it all with a new perspective.

I can also start my blog off with a fresh start! I admit that I had let it fall by the wayside. For the last year or year and a half I have just had no time to do much! I’m ready to remedy that!

Whether you are a new visitor or someone who has frequented my blog often, I would like to invite you to continue to check in here and grow with me! I’m still getting ideas together for how I want to do my website and blog but it will definitely be an adventure. It would be nice to have a few friends come along with me!

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to check back often!  :-)

Ken