Wednesday, January 01, 2014

My New Year's Goal for 2014


It's time to set my goals for 2014. As I look back at my goal last year I see I didn't fully accomplish it. I wanted to learn CSS and redesign my family website. I didn't fix that family website but I did create a new one to serve another purpose for the family. During the year I was offered to audit the Salt Lake Community College Genealogy Course in exchange for blogging about the experience. For my mid-term project I created a website out of a blog and added faith promoting stories of experiences that our family has had. So even though I didn't do all that I wanted last year I did something so I'm OK with that.

This year I will continue taking the Salt Lake Community College Genealogy Courses. This has been a great opportunity for me. I am excited to learn more and become a better genealogist.

This past year I worked on things as I felt inspired to do them. I established some really good habits that have been blessings in my life. Here are some of the things that I did.

1. I set aside 1 hour a day to work on my own genealogy. I got up an hour earlier each day so I could do this first thing in the morning. My highest priority during this time frame was to make sure the temple work has been done for all family members that I have permission to do. Giving up an hour in the morning, has blessed my life with better time management with the hours left in my day.

2. I started attending the temple once a week to perform temple ordinances for deceased family members. I decided to go every Tuesday morning at the 6:00 am session. I can't even begin to tell you how much my family and I have been blessed for doing this. 

3. In October I felt impressed to start exercising and eating better. I joined my local gym and have gone every single day that they have been open. This morning when I weighed myself I was surprised to find I had lost 14 lbs and gained nothing during the holiday season. I can easily gain 20-40 lbs during the holidays so I am rather proud of this accomplishment. This might not sound like the type of goal or accomplishment that is genealogy related. But, I realized if I'm not healthy I won't be capable of doing all the genealogy related things I want to during my life time. I might want to preserve my genealogy for posterity but I need to do a little preserving of my own life along the way so it can get done. 

These new habits are going to continue this coming year. I found as I set those goals during the year that I needed specific days and times to achieve them, so the habit could be established. My pressing need right now is to start digitizing tons of stuff in my home and then get rid of the mess. The only way that is going to happen is if I get a plan in place.

BYU has amazing equipment I can use to get everything digitized and that is where I want to work on this project. We only have one car in our family so this is troublesome. I work in the mornings from home and my husband takes the car at 2:00 pm to work in SLC which is about a 40 minute drive. For me to have the car requires hours out of my day for the 2 round trips. My plan is to get my husband to ride FrontRunner to work 1 day a week so I can have the car. He gets out of work to late to take FrontRunner home so I will have to pick him up but that's only 1 round trip. We've had a practice run using FrontRunner together so I think I have my husband convinced that this plan will work. I still need to figure out what day of the week to always do this on so we get a good habit established. So all the details are not worked out yet, but as you can see it's coming. I probably won't get everything digitized this year but that's OK the important thing is to start. 

It's my prayer that you have a wonderful and prosperous New Year. Thank you for being my friends and watching me along my genealogy journey. I am going to start another blog this year but it will focus on a different part of my life. I'm calling it Renee's Christian Life Blog. I feel such a desire to share my stories of faith, miracles and the blessing in my life from trying to follow Christ. I'm not a perfect person there is so much room for me to grow, but if you are interest in my journey I invite you to read this other blog.

But I will still "See ya tomorrow, for tomorrow is always another genealogy day!"

3 comments:

Vicki said...

Hi Renee,

Thank you for sharing the changes you made in your life this past year. I'm glad that I got to meet you at the conference in November at BYU. I also have been prompted to work on my health and have lost almost 30 pounds since the end of June by following the Starch Solution Diet (whole foods, plant-based). I feel so much better! Good luck with your new blog. I read your first article and I look forward to reading it in the future. Happy New Years! Vicki Pfeffer

Vicki said...

Hi Renee,

Thank you for sharing the changes you made in your life this past year. I'm glad that I got to meet you at the conference in November at BYU. I also have been prompted to work on my health and have lost almost 30 pounds since the end of June by following the Starch Solution Diet (whole foods, plant-based). I feel so much better! Good luck with your new blog. I read your first article and I look forward to reading it in the future. Happy New Years! Vicki Pfeffer

Uhura3 said...

You have great ideas about your focus this year for your genealogy. I'm shooting for sending several of my family history publications to the libraries in the area where those surnames began. Happy Hunting!