Murch One-Name Study

[Most of this is reposted from my new blog murch.org]

I've done it!  I've taken the first step - or can it be called a giant leap?  I have been researching my own family tree for 37 years, and now I am moving to another level.

Today I became a member of the Guild of One-Name Studies and registered the surname MURCH as the one I am going to research - possibly for the next 37 years.  Oh, that doesn't mean I am going to ignore the names in my own ancestry, but this is branching out in a different way.

A One-Name Study studies - well, one name.  Not a given name like John or Elizabeth, but a surname.  And it doesn't limit itself to one place, either, such as all the John MURCHes in a tiny village in a corner of one county in one country. No, I will be looking for MURCHes everywhere - and I mean everywhere.  As in 'worldwide' everywhere.

*hops from foot to foot in excitement*

A-Z Challenge 2014: Reflections on the Challenge

I found this year's A-Z Challenge (2014) to be the most enjoyable.  Not just because of the theme I chose, but because I adopted a different strategy to the other 2 years I have been involved.  It had been suggested to me before - but, this time, I did it!

The strategy:  Although we had Sundays 'off', I chose to use Sunday afternoons to write all the posts for the coming week and schedule them ahead of time.  They were short posts, and I found that, although pictures are pretty, they tend to make the post look horrendously long and you give up reading after one scroll-down.  So mine were short and sweet text-only - and I don't think that any readers were put off because there were no pictures!

Scheduling posts ahead of time meant that I could use the time each day to go and visit other people's blogs.  This is something I failed at miserably in years gone past.  But this time, I managed to visit and leave comments and read comments on my own blog and reply to those comments.  I really felt as though I was participating, rather than 'oh-gosh-I've-got-to-find-the-time-to-write-yet-ANOTHER-post' and 'thank-goodness-it's-over' on April 30.  In fact, on April 30 2014, I felt energised!

The only thing I would say that I found to be awkward was reading people's comments on my own blog, then going to visit them.  There was VERY often no link, so either I clicked on their name, on their profile, on their 'My Blogs' - or went back to the A-Z Challenge site, found them in the linky list, clicked on them -aaargh! So many clicks! So little time!  So little patience!  It should be a rule that everybody makes their own hyperlinked signature, such as
My blog is at <a href=http://genwestuk.blogspot.co.uk/>GenWestUK</a>

It's easy enough to do, and encourages bloggers to go and visit, as all they have to do is click once, and they're there. 

Otherwise: I loved the A-Z Challenge, and look forward to 2015!