Planting my family tree

Last night I finally signed up for Ancestry.com. I’ve been thinking about it for months but I kept resisting taking the plunge. Like a 2 week free trial is something that needs debating. For whatever reason, at 8:00 last night I signed up. It was a bad idea and I’ll tell you why. I spent 3 1/2 hours on the site working on my family tree. That meant that I went to bed at 11:30 the night after a 3 day weekend. That’s the worst possible combination for your first day back. Can’t drag yourself out of bed x 2.

The site is so addicting. I was going to do a bare bones tree just to see if there were some cool things on my parents and grandparents in there -- I did find a rockin’ pic of my dad in his high school yearbook -- but it was so interesting that I just kept growing it and growing it. Let’s add all my uncles, aunts and cousins. Let’s go back to my great-grandparents and even one set of great-great-grandparents. It’s really amazing to see the US census from 1930 and see your great-grandparents’ names in there along with their newborn child, my grandparent.

I think the reason I put it off for so long was because I thought it would be boring or tedious. It’s definitely time consuming but it’s so much more interesting because it’s your family. Even people I never met are brought to life by this site.

Plus, you can make multiple family trees. I can research my girlfriend’s family, my godmother’s family, pretty much anyone I want. But it’s not creepy or invasive. They use publicly available information like censuses and old phone books.

It’s definitely worth a (time) investment although I don’t intend on extending my subscription beyond the free trial. It’s not as though new records are being uncovered from the 1930’s every day that I can attach to my relatives. But it’s fun while it lasts. Kinda like disco.