Goals for 2023

It seems too early, doesn’t it? It seems even boring. What happened to fall? Never mind that–what happened to summer?

I try to outline my goals for the coming year. It helps me stay focused during the year. I also try to make them specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. They call these SMART goals.[1]

Unfortunately, I rarely revisit them to see how I am doing but I am pretty focused–so they usually get done. But, here we go…

Goal #1: Publish book on The 1890 Orphan Train Riders of Hamilton County, Iowa (working title). This is a series of vignettes of the 46 orphan train riders who showed up in Hamilton County from NYC in the fall of 1890. I have found 31 so far. I started writing it as a book when two publications turned it down in 2021 when it was in article form. I have 30k words so far and I am only half way done with the vignettes, much less the commentary! To accomplish this goal I will have to:

• Conduct on-site research in Hamilton County, Iowa
• Probably take a trip to NYC
• Do additional research on each child
• Interview descendants, if there are any and if they can be found

Goal#2: Teach at least once in the Applied Genealogy Institute and maybe twice. Since I have already committed to teaching in the Spring semester of 2023, this is an achievable goal. Topic is already selected. Stay tuned.

Goal #3: Complete my Seattle GS obligations. I presently serve as Past President. Jim Secan will assume that position as soon as a new president is elected. I also presently serve as Co-Chair of SGS100, our centennial, which will have its capstone event on 20 October 2023.

Goal #4: Continue with my annual goal of having two articles published per year in genealogical journals. I achieved this goal in 2022 and I am on track for 2023. One article is in the queue for National Genealogical Society Quarterly. I would count the book, but there may be another article there as well.

Goal #5: Travel to Europe at least one time. I would like to do an extended time in the Scandinavian countries. (We have visited Pat’s homeland 2x, but I have yet to travel to Sweden, or Norway. We went to Denmark in 1982–I don’t think that counts any more.) On the other hand, an extended stay in Portugal sounds lovely.

That’s it! What are your goals for 2023? Do you write them down? Look at them again?

Happy Hunting!

Jill

What I have done since the last post: Mostly this week has been about getting ready for teaching the AppGen course on “Write As You Research!” looking at the student’s pre-assignment and making comments, sending out the reminder email and reviewing all the presentations, Syllabus and Weekly Sheets. I think I am ready. I also am gearing up for registration for the Certification Discussion Group course which will be taught in the early winter. worked some on the book and woo hoo! was contacted by a descendant of one recently. I have to get my ducks in a row before I call him back.

[1] the image is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

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