It’s kind of ironic, to depend on dead people to keep you going in life, but here we are. In the years leading up to 2020, my creativity was a struggle. I had good streaks and bad streaks. Waves, if you want to call it that. But as 2020 approached, I rather felt like the end of the struggle was at hand. I felt more like myself and was looking forward to moving forward.
Then the pandemic hit and everything fell apart.
My hard-won emotional stability spiraled down as my anxiety spiked with the cases. My fiction writing ground to a halt. I simply could not dive deep into the creative well, could not focus as I needed to for fiction work. Not with everyone home 24/7. And I beat myself up constantly for being too “weak” to power through.
Self-pummeling aside, I needed to do something. Genealogy came to my rescue. For whatever reason, I could lose myself for hours in researching family history—even when it wasn’t mine. The escape from the stress and anxiety of the “now” was a relief.
I soon wondered if I could put that genealogical focus to writing use. So I returned to a project that has long languished on my back-burner: a family history book for my mother’s side of the family. Wonder of wonders, I found I could focus on that, too.
Working on a writing project again has improved how I feel about myself, and has given me a sense of purpose and accomplishment as I tick off the things on my checklist. In a time of uncertainty and fear, genealogy has been my lifeline.
So, thank you, ancestors. You made me who I am today, and gave me shelter so I can find my way to tomorrow.
Nuts and Bolts—CoronaLife Day 509
I am progressing on my maternal genealogy book, getting into the nuts and bolts of putting it together.
I realized many of my trees were too large for the page size, and some of the tree would be lost in the binding. So I resized all of them to fit properly.
Up until now, all my chapters were in separate files. So now I am compiling of them into a single file. I proofread one more time, then paste it into the compiled book file. Because the margins are slightly different (I need a wider margin on the binding side), there is usually some minor cleanup of each chapter.
I then make sure each chapter is a new section, and add the chapter header. Then I go through the laborious project of tagging each person and location for my indexes.
The indexes are driving me a bit crazy. While the Name Index is fine, the Place Index refuses to wrap into two columns, thus leaving half the page blank. As far as I can tell, both indexes were set up the same, just referencing different tags.
I did multiple indexes successfully for my father’s book, so I know it can be done. I will look back at my father’s book and see how I did it there. Perhaps that will give me the answer.
As painstaking as this part of the process is, I feel like I am making decent progress. Five chapters down, twelve to go!
After this, I need to do the artwork for the book. Cover, chapter pages, any photos I want to include. Those will also be painstaking, but fun to do.
Onward!