Up for a challenge?

This one doesn’t take a lot of time, money or even effort, but the rewards will be payed forward for generations. Let’s get started!

Routine Change #1:  Day One App

Day One is a photo/journaling app (aka Diary) and it has become my newest best buddy. How could this possibly relate to family history, right?

Well, technically, the definition for family history is the study of genealogy and everything else in our lives including our “background, location, and circumstances.” In my mind, our family history starts with ourselves. My youngest daughter taught me this most important lesson when she would ask me to relate my own childhood stories to her in place of bedtime stories.

I can remember thinking that I didn’t have anything remotely interesting to tell her, but it turned out that she did love to hear all about my childhood and kept asking for more every night for quite a while. That was a big wake-up call to me and has had me thinking that not only do I need to work on my line of ancestors but I also need to keep working on my own life story.

So, back to the Day One app.  At $4.99, it is definitely the most expensive app that I have ever bought (available for both Apple and Android devices) but it has some very luxurious features that make me feel happy when I use it. How about that for a description!

It politely reminds me to journal about my day and allows me to add pictures as well as descriptions of the photo. This way, as I am capturing all these great photos of my day-to-day life, the stories are being kept as well. See where I’m going with all of this? It is the stories that our children and grandchildren and/or descendants want to know about.

I search records all the time getting facts with names, dates and places, but the real treasure, in my mind, is when I find a story!

Two more points that are critical for this app is that it will sync with a dropbox account (free cloud storage for the basic level) and it can be saved off as a PDF. Now, if you think about it, you can print books that contain all your entries and have a beautiful story of your life start to unfold.

Routine Change #2:  Instagram

 

Ok, this one also makes me just feel happy when I do it as well! It’s Instagram; plain and simple. Oh, I have had my Instagram account since about the time they started it back in 2010. Over the years, I have posted a couple of pictures and followed quite a few people to see all their beautiful posts but I haven’t ever figured out exactly what I would post. Until now…

I had an epiphany recently and it all seemed to make perfect sense. I am now posting pictures of all the wonderful things around our home that have a special meaning to me and my husband. Things like the christening gown that my mother wore, or the train clock that my husband’s grandfather owned, or the plates that my mom had accumulated. Yes, the list goes on and on which happily means that I will have quite a few things to post for a long time.

While my youngest daughter gasped that I wrote a fairly long description for my first entry, I am not letting that intimidate me. It is not like on Twitter where you have a defined number of characters. I can go ahead and give a description of the item as well as any stories and history information that I might have. Some will be short and some will be longer—I’m ok with that! This isn’t necessarily for anyone else’s eyes but my daughters, son and close relatives.

Here’s the absolutely best part of all of this: I can print a Chatbook from my postings on Instagram and I will have yet another priceless treasure documenting all the things that mean so much to me. Actually, they are not worth all that much moneywise – only memories and attachments to family that make me feel good when I see them! Once again, it is all about getting our own family stories down to be enjoyed some day down the road.

The interesting part of this is that I think my children will really enjoy these little insights into the things that they have  grown up with.  I’m betting that for the most part, they couldn’t tell me much about any of them. Hey… it’s not for not telling them, alright? I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt that they really want to know all this but when bombarded with all the studying that they have to do as well as work, they just don’t have time or a brain that is ready to take on anymore information.

There is the beauty in this! They can look back at my postings anytime and browse through the pictures and read as much as they want. And, they will be able to look at the Chatbooks I’m going to print as soon as I have a year’s worth – maybe for Christmas? And don’t forget hashtags when writing – I am going to give each family member a hashtag that I will use so that later, I can pull up all the entries that I have posted for each one. Now, how is that for something really cool? (I know that I am dating myself by using the word, “cool” but it just is!)

So you see, with these two really simple routine changes and you can rest assured that your own Life Story will carry on for the total pleasure of future generations.

Once again, I realize that for some of us, these new tools don’t seem so friendly, so tutorials will be coming shortly on the Day One App and Instagram for Family History. I’ll get into the details how to download them as well as how to get started to use all the different functions. When I have them ready to go, I’ll send out a note in the next newsletter!

Please share this with your friends and family! This is something that we can pass around to almost anyone that has a smartphone or uses a computer. As always, if you have any stories that you would like to share about your own method of journaling, I would love to hear about what works for you!