A new year already? Wait, where did the old one go? I had lots of unfinished business in 2009, so I guess it’s time to get organized. As a matter of fact, organization is tops on my to-do list for this year.

I’m forever getting distracted as I go about my genealogical business, often duplicating, complicating, or worse of all, neglecting genealogical sources. And that “pending” folder in my file cabinet?… is about to become a drawer unto itself. I had a research plan at one time and I know I should focus on one family group at a time, but sometimes a shiny object whizzes by and completely derails my best intentions.

I don’t make New Years resolutions, but if I did, I would vow to get my genealogical poop in a group. All the research in the world goes for naught if it never gets condensed into something usable, like a compiled history of one family group. I’ve written not one, but two summaries of the life and times of my great-great-grandfather and, as always, there’s new information to be added. So that’s where I’ll be in the early part of this year… heads down on the third edition.

That, and reconciling the data in my family history software with the online database on this site. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as exporting and importing a GED file from one source to the other. Learned that one the hard way back in October.

And, taking a clue from a few ancestors past, I’ve started recording my own life and times. You never know, after all, when the grim reaper might come a-calling. Of the hundreds and hundreds of ancestors I’ve researched, only four bothered to sit down and tell me (us) what they actually did and thought in their own lifetimes. I consider those, as crude as they may have been, the real treasures of family history.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still stories to be found, research to be done, data to be recorded… but for me, I think 2010 is going to be The Year of Organization. Yeah, like a year is gonna do the trick.

How ’bout you?