Over a lifetime I have learned our most valuable resource is TIME. We all have the same amount – 24 hours, 7 days, 365 days, etc. However, we do not know how many years we will live. The most important thing is how we spend that time.
The second most valuable resource is our relationships. Over my lifetime of more than ‘three score years and ten’, I have built a very large network of people, both relatives, and friends, who share my many passions. Here, I refer, particularly to family history.
In the last few years, life has changed dramatically for us with health issues, drought, fires, storms, and floods forcing us to make daily changes to accommodate what is presented.
As one might expect at this stage of life, I have also lost many of my friends and family through death, which has taken a great emotional toll. I now feel it is most important that I devote as much time as I can to our family history and share it with my siblings, children, and grandchildren as well as cousins of many degrees from 1st to sixth and beyond.
I may not have written many blogs over the last year, but I have done a lot with my family history. I have organized my documents, photographs, and research; designed and began a process of passing it on to present and future generations and I have also written lots of stories, biographies, and research and shared with those relatives and friends, who are interested in my work.
I have recently returned to teaching family history through our local U3A (University of the Third Age). Many of my students of fifty years plus of teaching, have asked me to share my experience and guidance so they can finish many of their personal family history projects. We have several new U3A members, who are just beginning their family history journey too. They have requested I share some of the notes on-line so they can refer and refresh their memories between classes.
I certainly do not have all the answers, but I hope these blogs and resources might assist others in their own family history journey.
Nola Mackey - Family History 
Sharing via your blog is a fabulous way to provide resources for your students… and anyone else. I find the generosity of family historians heartwarming, in the main they are happy to share info and the feeling of satisfaction of connection with the past of our families and present.
Yes, Dale, I have always shared wonderful relationships within the family history community, although we are often referred to as a ‘weird mob’. With the proliferation of unsourced and ‘creative’ family trees on the big subscription sites, it saddens me to see all these ‘cousins’ going off on the wrong ancestral lines. Of course, they would not appreciate me interfering in ‘their’ family history either. I hope by blogging and reaching out in that way they may be encouraged to contact me so we can share the rich history we have in common.