Idea Time--I need your help

  The number of hits on my blog has dropped dramatically the last few months, with good reason; I haven't been as diligent as I should have been in keeping new things posted. I've discovered that it isn't as easy as it seems to keep cranking out family historical items that interest a large spectrum of readers. For instance, the people in my father's line couldn't care less about the folks in my mother's line and vice versa.

I recently perused the various blogs I have written over the year or so I've been publishing and it started me to thinking about how to make it not only more interesting, but how to make it interesting to everyone who visits the blog. Going down family lines as I have done in the past is okay, if the particular blog happens to be your family line. If it isn't, bye bye, and justifiably so. After a few such visits, you won’t bother coming back and I understand. I don't want that to happen, I want you to find something interesting in each and every new post I make. But how to do that and still be exploring and writing about family history is a real challenge. After all, going back just three generations produces sixteen different family lines. It makes you realize your related to a huge chunk of the world’s population but that there is an even more enormous group out there that couldn't care less about half of those ancestors you are writing about.

I don't know whether I can keep it up but I have decided to try and write and publish two blogs a week, one on each family line. Unfortunately, I'm going to be out of circulation for the next month. Genie and I are heading back across the country to visit family on both sides and to collect as much family history as we can by visiting areas we know where long ago family members lived. I am dedicated to finding and recording as much family history as I can in the time I have remaining. Genie's computer is portable so I'll try to publish a bit now and then as we go along. So, I hope you will stay with me on the journey through our families past.

As an aside, I'm writing about my own life's happenings and find it very difficult not only to keep it on track but to make it interesting reading. Very difficult indeed. So far, I've written 175 pages single spaced. One week ago the program I was using, an old version of Word Perfect, crashed and I thought for sure all was lost. I've been working on the project on and off for eight or nine years. Talk about devastated, I could have crawled under a snake’s belly wearing with a tall silk hat. My wonderful wife, Genie, came to my rescue and has been able to salvage most of that work. For that I will be forever grateful.