Since Alex Haley's birthday was a few days ago, and he basically fueled the modern genealogy movement, Schelly at Tracing the Tribe challenged us to think about how we'd be spending our time if we never began looking at our family histories. For me it's fairly easy to think about because it wasn't all that long ago - I didn't get interested in genealogy until 2003 when I subscribed to Ancestry.com for the first time. I retired from the Army in 2004 and up until then I really didn't have a whole lot of time to do research like I'm able to do now. As busy as my Army career was, if I tried to spend the time off I did get in the sometimes solitary pursuit of my ancestors, my family would have slapped me around quite a bit. I tell you one thing, before genealogy took over my spare time I was a whole lot more physically active than I am now. When I had time off we'd be walking, biking, hiking, swimming and generally living a very active lifestyle. Now that I think about it, since starting genealogy I've gotten just a little bit soft around the middle and I can't out run my son anymore. I haven't had my cholesterol or blood pressure checked in awhile, but I imagine those numbers have increased too...hmmm...I wonder if genealogy should be considered a health risk factor?
Even though I was a late starter in genealogy, I initially started thinking about it when Alex Haley's book and the TV shows came out. I was in college at the time and remember thinking about how cool it would be to learn about my family history, but of course I didn't take it any further than that...after all, there were girls, parties, and oh yes, classes to attend.
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