31 Days of Finishing – Day 27: Help Someone Else

Day 27 – I helped my daughter with something from her to-do list – “Put photos into grandpa’s album.”  I realized that doing this one night of “help” sparked an interest in me to share my story.

“Mom, don’t you want to help me with Grandpa’s book? You can put these photos in.”

Now when your daughter who is doing so much better from a concussion asks you to help her with a project (the 1st she’s done in 4 weeks), it is hard to say, “No.”

My daughter is researching our family history. She started with my Dad’s side because there are more “knowns” about the immediate lineage. But she had me look up something about my mom’s side before putting photos into the scrapbook about my dad.

An hour later I sigh these words, “You know when I play Spider Solitaire, if they never let me win, I quit.” I am close to quitting now.”

But then the next search led to a gold mine. And now I have some information about my mom’s people. They were shoemakers and furniture builders. Many died way too young. I only got back to the 1880’s, but I feel closer to my mom (who passed away in 2001) knowing these few facts.

And I wish I knew their stories. Stories that would flesh out these few facts.

Moral of the story? Now I am hooked. I am hooked on finding out who the people are that came before me, and my mom, and my grandma, and great grandma. I want facts to go with the limited stories that I do know. I want to figure out my connection to these people.

And I realize that while helping my daughter, I am now keen to do something on my to-do list – “Write MY family history.” 

For many years I’ve thought it not too important to document my life because I am not that important. But in the scheme of things a furniture maker is not that “important” either. Perhaps this is true for “the world,” but it is not true for me. I want to know.

And someday my story will be important to others.

During this month of October I am joining LOTS of bloggers hosted by The Nester who will be writing every day about a topic. My topic is about finishing. I will spend 31 minutes each day on a to-do item (from the secondary list).

I will write about it and share any productivity tips I find helpful to FINISHING things.

Go here for the Landing Page with all the posts (which go live as they are written). The list is towards the bottom of the page.

Your Turn . . .

• While helping someone else with a to-do item, has it sparked a similar interest in you? If yes, please share.
• Do you think it is important to share your story?
• Are you interested in knowing about the lives of your ancestors?
• How’s it going with crossing off things on your secondary to-do list? What motivates you to get things done?

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