52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 52

St. Louis Arch

This is the last week of the 2018 52 Ancestors Challenge and the writing prompt is, appropriately, Resolution. I am choosing not to write about an ancestor this week, instead focusing on a reflection of this year’s challenge. It has been wonderful to write about a different ancestor each week. The purpose of the yearly challenge is to get us to write down our ancestor’s stories, and this is a good way to do get it done.

Having said that, I don’t think I will be participating in the 2019 challenge. Personally, I found that many of the writing prompts did not inspire me, and some of that was probably due to the fact that I would take them too literally. The other issue I had was trying to avoid redundancy. Because I have written about many of the ancestors before in the February writing challenges I have participated in, it was a struggle to come up with new ancestors who fit the bill for the topic of the week’s writing prompt.

My resolution for the new year is to find a different challenge for myself, whether that is one I create myself or something I find on the internet. I definitely want to keep researching and writing, but I need to find something that doesn’t end up feeling like such a chore each week. I do genealogy because I find it interesting and fun. I certainly don’t want a writing challenge to take that away.

Here’s to breaking through some genealogy walls - and writing about it - in 2019!