Mightier Acorns

Who are we really doing this for?

By this point in any New Year, you may have had your fill of annual retrospectives, best-of lists, motivational etudes, and resolutions. (If you haven’t, here are some good resources at Projectkin and Mission:Genealogy to help launch your New Year.)

But if you’re like me, feeling leery of 2025 and what is waiting for us around the corner, you may be feeling a bit punk rock about things – a mix of general defiance and exhausted pugnacity.

What keeps me going when the yawning, gravitational temptation of nihilistic futility beckons from the headlines? Why do this, of all things, when the world is on fire?

The Work Is the Focus

I don’t know what drew you to genealogy/family history – I don’t really know what drew me to it. How I got here doesn’t matter as much as the work itself.

But what do I mean when I call it “the work” – it isn’t some single, coherent mission with an endpoint. There will never be a point at which I can state “I am done” because for as long as I live, there will be more history.

When I say “the work is the focus,” I mean that the processes we go through, the steps we take, and the disciplines we learn are important.

Maybe there was some idea in your mind of finding someone Notable in your direct ancestry, or some mystical or religious notion that sparked your initial entry to this world. But once you learned the skills necessary to do a proper job of telling and proving the stories about your ancestors, something probably changed. In the process of finding and evaluating evidence, and digging past the superficial legends that were handed down to you, you either drifted away from the work (and thus, are not reading essays like this one) or you adopted a more realistic vision of the past that let you continue.

Critical Thinking Is Critical

To my mind, there is no tool more important to the work of family history (or science, or any learning endeavor) than critical thinking. I may have mentioned this before:

When you are researching your family history, it is critical (definition 3) that you think critically (definition 2) even if that means criticizing (definition 1) the existing stories that you think you know about your family.

Getting better at thinking critically means getting in the habit of constantly asking, “How do you know that? And how do I know that?”

Thinking critically also means evaluating yourself and your biases – understanding that “bias” is normal, and just refers to the shortcuts and assumptions that are necessary for a brain to process masses of information. A bias only becomes a problem if you don’t examine it and compare your results to the work of others – asking “How do I know that?” until you can be confident that your starting assumptions were correct.

Once you have acquired that habit, you will find yourself applying critical thinking to the news and your daily interactions. This may be good because you will be more resistant to misinformation, but it can also be frustrating because those around you (often, people you care about and want to think well of) won’t want to confront their own biases and assumptions.

For me, throwing myself into the work of genealogical research is an escape from the madness.

Know Your Audience

We have to be careful about escapism.

And I can’t lie – a major motivation for me to put my thoughts and research into a blog (first on Blogger from 2009-2021 and now on Substack) is to curb my tendency to keep obsessively pursuing more information. Writing about the Work forces me to apply critical thinking to it; editing my essays forces me to question my assumptions and deconstruct the narratives that I, and my relatives, have built around the people in our past.

So, writing is a necessity – but when you write, the first thing you have to identify is “who is my audience?” Every time I face the blank screen of a new post, who am I addressing?

I am grateful that so many of you have found your way to my writing, and that you find value in what I have written. Your support and interaction encourage me to keep going when I doubt myself. And you inspire me constantly to think in new ways and to dig deep to find stories in the data.

But… if I’m honest, I’m not writing these posts for you. You are necessary and welcome, but you are not my audience.

And I am delighted when someone I’m related to, however distantly, finds their way to my work. Those moments when you find me and say hello are intensely gratifying, like payday, or that season-ending cliffhanger in a favorite show. Your attention is welcome, and I like to think that when I’m gone, the work I’ve done will be of use to descendants and cousins in the future.

But again, if I’m honest, I’m not writing these posts for you, either. You are necessary and welcome, but you are not my audience.

I hope that someday one or more of my children might take an interest in the work, but I also understand that it’s a lot to take in. It may take them as many years of study to comprehend what I’ve done here as it took for me to learn how to do it.

So, while I’m writing for them in a distant, intellectual way, they are not my expected audience. They aren’t who I am addressing.

There is only one person who has to care about the things that I write. There is one person whose opinion and engagement are indispensable to this project:

Was that Humor or Ego?

Both – and neither.

The point I’m trying to make is that none of our projects will mean anything to other people if they don’t mean something to us, first.

The thing that makes people want to read what you write is your obvious delight and satisfaction in writing it. And the only person who is required to read everything you write is also you – so make sure that person’s needs are being met.

Whatever 2025 holds for us, take care of yourself. You deserve a good audience.