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Tomorrow, The Armchair Genealogist rolls past its fourth
anniversary and I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate then by finding this blog listed in Family Tree Magazine’s 40 Best Genealogy Blogs for 2013.
Some mornings I get up and wonder how I ended up here and
why I continue to blog. There is little reward or remuneration in blogging. Few
can make a living from it. Yet day after day, I’m drawn to it.
What inspires me and allows me to keep things fresh, interesting
and remain consistent has little to do with me but YOU!
Those little morsels
of comments that you leave keep me going. It’s when I wake up in the morning to
an email from a reader who learned something in the last post and wants to
thank me for helping them. It’s when a reader takes the time to comment even if
it’s just a ‘thanks I enjoyed this post.’ It’s all those who tweet and retweet,
leave a comment on my Facebook page, and even a click of your mouse on the LIKE
button is an endorsement that tells me to keep doing what I’m doing.
I appreciate the time each one of you takes to offer a few
words at the end of a blog post. It encourages me to comment more myself. Don't leave a remark just because it’s good for
SEO. Please comment
because what the blogger wrote moved you. Comment because you found something
valuable in their post, even if it’s just one small thing. Comment if you
actually took one idea away and implemented into your life. Comment if the post
brought you to tears or made you chuckle. If that blog post stirred any kind of
reaction in you, please tell the writer. Comments are the commodities by way of which most
bloggers are compensated.
More than ever, I am conscientious of that now! I’m very
aware when a new genealogy blogger joins the ranks. Do you remember how it felt to get that first
comment, to know that someone actually read your words, looked at your blog? It’s
such a small gesture on our part yet a big deal to the writer. Years from now
when they look at this era in the birth of social media, let’s make sure we can
reflect back on the good that came out of it. My hope is that through technology
we found a way to be a more supportive community than we could have ever
imagined.
I am proud to be a part of this village and I want to thank
Family Tree Magazine for the recognition they bestowed on me this week. They
are right, being on this list is a little icing on the cake and it makes the
work a little sweeter. I want to congratulate all the bloggers on the list but
also all those who are not on the list. There are hundreds of brilliant family
historians writing beautiful moving blog posts every week. Reward their efforts
and leave a comment.
Most importantly, as I celebrate four and forty, I want to thank you for taking the time to
stop by every week, for supporting me via a comment, email, tweet or like and
for being such an incredible tribe. I look forward to the next couple of years
and the wonderful things we are going to accomplish together.
