Twelve Gifts of TIME, Please!

Just for fun, I’ll explain what I really want for the holidays, and as a matter of fact every day:  TIME. Time to do genealogy and still have a life.

You, dear readers, are probably much better at getting your genealogy tasks done every day. I never finish my to-do lists. I dwell in an infinite sea of tasks, trying to stay afloat. No one else feels like that, right?

The best song I know about over-the-top gifts is The Twelve Days of Christmas, so I thought I’d start there. Except that I want all twelve gifts of Enough Time on the SAME day—the Perfect Genealogical Accomplishment Day.

And then I want that day to happen over and over, pretty please. Thank you, Santa.

So here goes my request for 12 gifts of Enough Time (in one repeated day), prompted by the “12 Days of Chrismas” carol:

“Twelve drummers drumming”:

Twelve cross-checked sources. Drumroll! These will add up eventually to the well-known Reasonably Exhaustive Search. Drumroll again!

“Eleven pipers piping”:

 Eleven tweeters tweeting to me, and then I tweet back. We have extended meaningful conversations with links and pics and warm-hearted retweets.

“Ten lords a-leaping”:

Ten blogs a-posting, and leaping out to my reader’s eye. They each deserve a thoughtful comment. Well, I can do that now with my gift of Enough Time.

“Nine ladies dancing”:

Nine photo-scanning successes. Snap! That means each photo scanned with Flip-Pal, imported to laptop/iPad with caption and date, edited, sorted to folder.  Boo-tee-ful.

“Eight maids a-milking”:

Milking is tough work. So here I need time for eight robust efforts to demolish a brick wall with newspapers, military records, library searches, tombstones, vital records through the mail, and what have you. Maybe the milk comes out, maybe it doesn’t.

“Seven swans a-swimming”:

Here I apply my caveat that I still want a life. So, seven units a-exercising. My current unit is 5 minutes—this means a half-hour walk. Won’t make me as slender as a swan, but will keep the blood running through my veins.

“Six geese a-laying”:

So many family letters a-laying around to be archived! For starters, to be put into acid-free folders and archive boxes. So, six letters. Or why not six whole packs of letters, since my gift will be Enough Time. Preserve those golden eggs for future generations!

“Five golden rings”:

Read five pages from my favorite classical genealogy text. Elizabeth Shown Mills, Val Greenwood, Marsha Rising . . . Hey, why not five chapters! I have Enough Time now.

“Four calling birds”:

Four new cousins calling. Surprise! Each one has a big new cache of well-documented family trees, wills, land deeds, and daily journals from the 1700s that are even now being mailed to me to be organized. Well, that’s all right, I have Enough Time now.

“Three French hens”:

Three contacts with genealogists, each contact as deliciously substantial as a French hen. I get to choose from webinars, conferences, podcasts, Blog Talk Radio….How lucky that I have Enough Time now so that I can do three in one day.

“Two turtle doves”:

Two techie updates. Sweet as turtle doves. I’m including only two, because I’m a bit slow reading those App instructions, even with my gift of Infinite Time. Yesterday, I downloaded some kind of photo app manual . . . 136 pages.

“And a partridge in a pear tree!”

Yes. One Fantastic Genealogical Find. I deserve it. We all deserve it.

Or. And? Writing One Informative and Loveable Blog.

Or maybe . . . Making a Mind-Blowing Supper. Use Instagram. Tweet it.

 

Now, I ask you. This isn’t much to want during one entire gi-normous day, is it? This is only what we all need. Fair is fair.