Family History Writing Challenge - Day 27

Sometimes I can simply be overwhelmed with research. Which line do I pursue next? How do I focus on the line in hand rather than be distracted by a different line? Often I receive an email or a document which takes me off on the road of research and discovery then I receive another email or contact and that prompts me to perhaps look at that data so that I can answer the email. I then find that I get absorbed into that research that I take sometime before getting back to what I was originally researching. By the time I get back to the original material I have lost my thought process and need to review the data. Does that happen to you or am I just disorganised?

My plan for the last few years has been to get my house in order or to complete, no, start the process of genealogy housekeeping. I am shocking at filing the data back into the files. There are, so a former boss told me filers and pilers and I am a piler; and alas not an organised one!....and I have 25 years of genealogy notes to file. As the films say. I could be some time!

Each conversation with a relative, visit to the record office, note, thought, plan and tree drawn out whilst researching has been processed, file (or piled), stored and perhaps revisited and then stored somewhere in the depth of my study. I dread to think how much paper and ink or pencil lead that is. Of course the fundamental question is do I really need 6 copies of a record? Do I need every note book written since 1986?

Whats more frightening, is that 70% of the current paper & data mountain relates to my maternal genealogy, 10% relates to my Italian ancestry, 5% relates to my husband's genealogy, 15% relates to my two one name studies and my one place study. I haven't stopped researching yet, there are many, many more ancestors and records to read and research. Just where will it all end?

Word count 348