Having worked awfully hard at trying to identify, acknowledge and conquer my addiction, I have discovered some new signs of the disease "geneaholism:"
1) Constantly tinkers with genealogy blog colors and fonts to make all four blogs "look better."
2) Will travel to faraway cities two days before a scheduled speaking engagement, take his laptop and blog away for hours in the hotel room. (My excuse was that the TV channel selection was really limited).
3) Goes twice a week to the Family History Center to fill up his flash drive with images from microfilms that are nearly unreadable - then prints them out at home.
4) Keeps Bloglines as his number 1 tab (in IE7) and reads new posts every time one comes in.
5) Finds himself searching in Ancestry.com for strange and funny census names, especially around holidays. Even worse, he posts a blog about them!
6) Tries to access the wireless internet at the library in the conference room for "show and tell," even though he knows that the wireless signal is weak and unreliable. To compensate, he downloads web pages to the flash drive at home and loads them onto the laptop for "show and tell" when the signal fails.
7) When a friend asks him to search for information about a defunct church, he also searches for the friend's ancestry and provides a 4 generation ahnentafel report a week later.
8) Plans all week to perform the "library trifecta" - three libraries in three hours to find three different unrelated genealogy treasures. This is followed by writing three blog posts.
9) Does not shy away from transcribing documents written in early colonial handscrawls, and forgets to eat lunch while doing so. M&Ms really help, though. Only 64 pages left to go!
10) While in New England for a funeral service, drags his wife around town to find the ancestral homes and gravestones of his family - again! I did it last year alone. My excuse was that it wasn't raining this year and the pictures would be better.
A bonus item:
11) "What? I cut the lawn four weeks ago. I watered the plants last week sometime. When did you buy new furniture?" I guess it's time to come out of the Genea-Cave.
Ah yes, I am addicted to genealogy and know it.
2 comments:
Looking at your list, it seems your geneaholism is slowly being replaced by a blogging addiction?
Love it! I particularly like #7. My friends know to be wary if I start asking them what they know about their family trees. I feel obliged to research for them!
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