Document it!

Document it...easy right?

If you do one thing today go out and buy a notepad or a journal or start a new document on the computer…and start writing…about you.

Why?

No one is going to document your life better than you unless you have some kind of documentary film crew following you around…and I doubt you do.

You’re probably asking…”Well, what’s so important about me?”
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Listen, it’s not about whether you think you’re important or not. It’s not about whether you’re rich or famous or the top scientist or a Nobel Prize winner. It’s about documenting your life for you and the generations to follow. Your daily life, even if it’s boring as Hell, it’s still your life. And it may not seem like much to you right now, but it may in the future, and it may to other’s 100 years from now.

Haven’t you ever wished you had more information about your long-lost relatives? Wondered about the lifestyle of the great ancestors who came from Europe or Mexico or Africa and settled in Michigan, California, Nebraska or wherever? Maybe you saw a photo of your great grandmother posing for a photo in a garden and wondered…where did she get those clothes? Whose garden is that? What town is that? Who took the photo? What did she do before and after the photo was taken?

I know for me; I love history and the history I love the most is my family history. And as far as I know, none of my relatives or ancestors were famous movie stars, no celebrated baseball players, no disease curing scientist…just your every day average people. But I always wanted to know more about them. I saw photos of my grandparents in the mid-40s when they were in their 20’s leaning up against a 1940’s Plymouth truck and wondered…what were they doing that day? Did they go for a ride in the country? Did they eat at some local diner? Were they madly in love?

Census records and other mundane town records give us names and date of birth and perhaps a city or two lived in, but it doesn’t give us the meat and potatoes of who our ancestors really were or what they really did. You may get lucky enough to find a news clipping or two about something they did or maybe listen to the stories handed down from generation to the next. But there’s so much out there…lost…never to be seen or heard again. To me, that’s sad.

If you don’t write it down, if you don’t document the wonderful stories of you, then it will be lost forever. Do it for your kids, your grandkids and future generations because I promise you, they will want to know.