Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Synchronicity In Genealogy

We have all heard the stories. A book falls off a shelf in the archives and opens to a surname you are researching that has been a "brick wall" for the past 10 years. Or you are casually walking around a random cemetery (because that's what us genealogists do for fun) and come across an ancestor that was supposed to have died and been buried two counties over!

Synchronicity. It's those seemingly random things in life that come together at exact moments. They can't be rationally explained, they just are. When they happen to me with regards to my ancestors, I can't help but wonder, "Who is really running the show here?" Some ancestors really make you work at finding them, others are happy to be easily found, and then there are some that don't want to be found at all--at least not by you.

I recently wrote a blog about being tech-challenged and that I would like to become more tech-savvy. In the blog I mentioned having a hard time understanding Google + and Second Life, you can read the blog entry here. Well, oddly enough, later that day I received notification that my free "Social Media For the Wise Genealogist" class was going "live" in a few days. The class is given by The National Institute for Genealogical Studies. When I attended the NGS conference in Charleston, South Carolina this past May I visited their booth. The National Institute for Genealogical Studies was offering a free internet course and I signed up for it (free is very attractive), and I figured this would be a good opportunity to see what they were all about. Then of course with all the excitement a conference brings, and life in general, I forgot about it. Once the class gets rolling I'll of course blog about it and let you know how it is going.

Synchronicity. I love it when it happens. It's fun. If you like hearing or reading about these kinds of incidents, there is a book called Psychic Roots by Henry Z Jones who writes about many genealogists who have these experiences. I've provided an affiliate link below.

So, have you ever had one of these strange incidents happen to you?

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