Ancestry doesn’t have a playbook…but it needs one

One really frustrating aspect about getting involved in ancestry and genealogy is the fact that it doesn’t come with a guide on how to do things — especially for a case as specific as mine.

It’s not like other hobbies either. Like improv. If you want to learn improv, there’s hundreds of books and classes you can read and take and a massive community of people who meet every day in order to hone their skills. Depending on what city you’re in, you can easily practice improv every night if you wanted.

And there are people who are masters at improv — Mick Napier, Susan Messing, Dave Pasquesi.

Can you think of someone who’s a master at genealogy?

Harvard professor and permeant fixture on my vision board, Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the only person I can think of and that’s only because he has that cool PBS show. 

With ancestry, this just isn’t the case. There’s no class I can take every Thursday for 3 hours that’ll help me find my grandfather, and you have to really dig for what resources there are out there that teaches the beginner on how to succeed in genealogy. 

Instead of bitching about it any longer, I want to do something about — that’s why I’m going to make an effort to blog every single day for the time being.

I’ll be the Casey Neistat of ancestry blogs. Go figure. 

This will both help track my progress and provide a comprehensive resource for others on genealogy matters in the future.

Also, I’m getting this on paper now so I might be better about blogging in the future.

Let’s do this.