I know – I’ve been gone. I haven’t written, I haven’t really researched, I haven’t really, well, done anything of note as of late and while I occasionally feel a pang of guilt for that, I have come to realize that I was experiencing a “burn out.” Not just a genealogy burn out, but a total life burn out and it is/was awful to experience. I mean, I’ve had points where I’ve done too much cluster genealogy in one go and it gets dull and every name/date starts blurring together but this was something altogether different. Since Easter, things have just not been normal at our house and while it has taken its toll on our entire family and I’m just simply exhausted to the point I want to turn my phone off, crawl in bed with a good book for a few weeks, and live off delivery.
There is a quip our family has adopted, a motto, if you will – if it weren’t for bad luck, we’d have no luck at all. That is and has been, the crux of my husband and I’s eighteen-year marriage. If it can go wrong, it does go wrong for us, usually in triplicate. I think we’re more surprised if something actually goes right at this point! But since Easter when my husband became ill with what we still suspect was COVID, his health has not recovered to the point that he’s left with a permanent stutter and slur, to which, they are still testing to find out the exact cause and potential treatments. Along with the physical issues, came mental issues too, and severe, uncontrollable mood swings. He’s exhausted, we’re exhausted as an entire family, and still struggling to find answers and proper treatments.
In the midst of that though, his car failed to the point it was more financially feasible to junk it then repair it. Then our secondary car, mine, started to have a colossal meltdown and one by one, major issues (and expenses) started to incur. So we’ve been sharing a car between three adults and I’ve been playing chauffeur, which is sucking up oodles of my daytime hours. And then… last weekend, in the midst of a colossal downpour, our son woke up and yelled for me to come downstairs to his room in the basement. It was flooding and we had to make a mad scramble to unplug electronics and pull what we could up into dry safe zone. Despite our best efforts with fans and dehumidifiers, in the end, we had to pull every bit of carpeting out and toss out two couches from the main entertainment room because mold was starting to set in.
Needless to say, on top of all that, I’ve still been plugging away at my NSDAR registrar duties, my volunteer work with the local cemetery committee, and a paid client I’m trying to hurry up and finish before school starts back in September to finish up my history bachelors. Thankfully, my friend is taking over leading my genealogy club at the library for a bit until the New Year to take one thing off my plate at least. I have a laundry list of things unfinished: my own NSDAR supplementals, my NaNoMo novel from last November is left unedited, a complete overhaul of my own genealogy record storage, and what’s worse – I haven’t touched my certification portfolio in eons. That was the ONE thing I promised myself I would do and here I am dragging my feet and with everything else going it, it’s the thing that’s been left behind most. I keep even asking myself if I really want to be certified at this point. What am I going to do with it if I did finish it? I’m just really struggling to find where I want to be, how to get there, and if it’s worth the fight. I’ve heard from so many other genealogists that finding work right now is so hard – with so many people out of work, who has excess cash to toss towards professional genealogy? And if I can’t’ find time to work on my portfolio, where am I going to find time to research or write journal articles even to make up for no actual clientele? I’m just in a pickle of my own making. I need to make decisions and quickly.
So anyway, if you’ve wondered where I’ve been or how I’ve been, there you go. Bonkers – in a nutshell. I hope you’re all faring well out there. I’ll be back with more history/genealogy stuff soon. I just have to get back into the swing of it so stayed tuned.