I can’t believe I almost missed it again–my blogiversary! 

I happened to be looking through my blog the other day and realized that today, 28 June 2015 is my ninth anniversary of blogging at The Accidental Genealogist.

I don’t know why I can’t remember this date. My very first post was on 28 June 2006! I really didn’t know what a blog was, what I would write about, or whether anyone would read it! One of my very first readers who reached out to me was Randy Seaver who writes the Genea-Musings blog (which happens to be one of my personal favorites)–thanks, Randy!

Perhaps the date slips my mind because I am busy with other things–you know trying to make a living as a writer, instructor and lecturer. Or maybe it is down to the fact that I haven’t been blogging as much as I would like (out of sight, out of mind). It could be that since it the blogiversary date falls in the summer, I am just not as attentive to it as I should be.  

Whatever the reason, it doesn’t mean I haven’t enjoyed sharing my genealogical finds, or my thoughts about writing family history.  

For the December/January 2015 issue of Internet Genealogy Magazine, I wrote an article entitled “Confessions of a Geneablogger” in which I shared my thoughts on creating, building and maintaining a better genealogy blog.  In this article I confess that I am not always the best blogger I can be.  I list five reasons to blog (giving ancestors a voice, connecting with cousins, inspiring and educating others, engaging with other genealogists, and marketing). I also list five things that stop me from blogging (privacy concerns, the “who cares?’ syndrome, technology glitches/issues, finding good images, and fear of rejection). 

You can read the full article by clicking here. Thanks to Ed Zapletal, Editor/Publisher of Internet Genealogy for permission to share the article. (Disclosure: I am a paid freelance contributor to IG).

As I enter my tenth year of blogging, I am thinking about some of my favorite posts from the past nine years.  These include posts for my “Fearless Females” Blogging Prompts Series (which I launched in March 2010 in celebration of Women’s History Month, my Sojourn in Slovakia posts (which chronicled my two trips to my ancestral villages in Slovakia in 2010 and 2012), the numerous posts I have written to honor my ancestors, including “Ten Genealogy Lessons I Learned from My Father” and “Ten Genealogy Lessons I Learned from My Mother,” and those that covered the topic of writing such as “Free Video for The Write Stuff: Using Nonfiction Writing Techniques to Write a Better Family History“–the post I wrote about celebrating 25 years as a nonfiction writer.  

In addition, as I move into year ten, I hope to blog more regularly than I have been. I have a few ideas in the works, in particular more “how-to” type posts related to the combination of my two favorite subjects–genealogy and creative nonfiction writing. If there are any topics you would like to see me write about on this blog, feel free to leave a comment with your suggestions!

In the meantime, I invite you to take a look at my other professional website (LisaAlzo-Dot- Com) and Immersion Genealogy – a new website I have created to share information and resources about the increasingly popular area of genea-tourism/heritage travel. I have recently starting presenting on this topic. Most recently for a livestream session entitled “No Easy Button: Using Immersion Genealogy to Understand Your Ancestors” for the Southern California Genealogical Society Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank, California earlier this month. Click here to learn more. 

I would like to thank everyone who has followed me and this blog for the past nine years, and especially those who have taken the time to leave comments. Here’s to another year! 


Copyright 2015, Lisa A. Alzo
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