Too Many Choices?

If you're like me, you have too many choices of things you need and want to do. When I was a young girl, the choices were more limited. My family didn't have a television until I was about nine years old, so watching a television program was not a choice for me when I was little. Today I can turn on the television and watch local programs. I can subscribe to cable or satellite services and watch hundreds of channels on my television. I can use high-speed Internet service and watch television programs, videos, news broadcasts, and movies. I can put a videotape in a VCR or a DVD in a DVD player and watch a movie or documentary. I can record broadcasts to watch at a later time. When I was young we had maybe 40 or 50 books in my home. The closest library was five miles away. My parents subscribed to a daily newspaper and to a couple of magazines a month. Now I have hundreds of books in my home. The library is less than a mile away and I can order in books at the library from other cities in our state. I can read newspapers online. I can research and find websites on almost any topic I want. When I was young we didn't eat out. We might get an ice cream cone at a drive-in once in a while, but we always ate our meals at home unless we were traveling. Then my mother usually packed lunch or we picked up a few things at a grocery store. Even when we went to a drive-in theatre, my mother brought our own treats. The types of fruits and vegetables available were limited. Prepared and packaged foods were more limited and most of our food was prepared from scratch. Growing up on a farm, we had our milk straight from the cow and eggs fresh from the chickens. During the summer we would pick vegetables out of the garden and fruit off from the trees in the orchard. Today eating out is a frequent occurrence for most people. When traveling stopping at fast food places is quick and easy and eating in a restaurant is a nice break. We have fruits and vegetables available from around the world and at almost any time of the year. Sometimes the choices seem almost overwhelming. When you shop for something to eat, you have numerous choices of where to shop. Then you have several choices of what to buy. When you want entertainment, you have several choices. When you need information, you have several ways to get the information. Recording what life was like in years past compared to now can be eye-opening for yourself as well as for your children or grandchildren. Start to write down how your life has changed. You have many choices of how to record your life story. You can write it with pencil and paper, type it on a typewriter or enter it into a computer. You can make an audio recording or you can make a video recording. You can take pictures with a regular camera or a digital camera or a video camera. You can type or print out your written story, make a CD or DVD of your story, publish your story on a website, or make a scrapbook, make a book with the printed story and photographs. But whatever way you choose, just start to record your story.

Download a free version of Personal Historian at http://www.rootsmagic.com/Try/Personal-Historian/ and see if it is a good way for you to record your story.

How's the Weather

When you write your story, writing what the weather was like can add a lot to your story. What you did and how you did it is definately affected by the weather. Maybe you traveled to see something special and because of the weather, you weren't able to see it. Maybe like friends of ours who made a trip back east during the summertime and ended up outrunning tornados, you have a lot of excitement added to your story. The weather really does affect our lives. Include information about the weather when it adds to your life story. It will make it more interesting and more real.

Illness Strikes

Recording illnesses doesn't seem like the best entries in your story. Illnesses are a time of discouragement, fear and sometimes wondering if life will ever be good again. I got sick this last week bad enough to miss work. I've had people ask me if I had the Swine Flu which has been in the world news. My symptoms were different, and I don't even live close to any confirmed cases of the Swine Flu. There is a lot of fear over this illness, so people ask.
Illnesses really do affect our lives. When we recover from an illness, we appreciate the good health we enjoy again. While we deal with the unpleasantness of an illness we learn patience and perseverance. Recording what we did to cope with an illness may be helpful to someone else dealing with a similar illness. If something we did made the illness worse, that information may be very important to another person. Describing the symptoms we have with a certain condition may help another person determine the disease they may be suffering from. Some diseases run in families so recording the information may help another family member determine what they are suffering from.
It would be nice if life were always pleasant and good. No one avoids problems, so knowing that others have struggled too can be very helpful. When you record your life story put in some of the health problems you've had. Then record the things you are grateful for: the medicine that made you better, the neighbor that brought over chicken soup, the surgeon that repaired the damage, the story that made you smile and most of all the wonderful feeling of having good health restored.

Community History Videos

Here are a couple more videos that give history of a community we've lived in. It is part of our family's history. Perhaps you can find videos or photos or stories of the places you have lived and gather more information for you family's story.

Personal History recorded in a News Video

Following is a video about a friend where she talks about her experience as a USO girl. I learned more about her from this news report. Personal history can be found in many ways. You may never have a news video made about you, but you might learn some history from news videos about people you know or places you have lived.

Favorite Family Sayings

Did your family have certain sayings that were repeated over and over? Most families do. Those sayings may be the basis of some of our beliefs. If your parents said, "Money is the root of all evil", you may struggle with having money because you believe it is evil. Maybe your mother said, "You kids are driving me crazy". Maybe she was a little bit crazy. If your parents said, "Love begins at home" then you probably feel love when you are home. I believe words have power, and I put up uplifting sayings throughout my home. A friend gave me a poster with the saying, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care".
I still struggle with living this way as I often feel that I know what is best and just wish I could tell people how to live. Then I see that I really don't know everything. Maybe I can give good advice, but first I may need to convince others that I really care about them and want the best to be in their lives. So I post sayings around my home in the hope that I will be able to live my life according to those sayings.
I came across a way to put these sayings in your home within printing out sheets of paper that eventually fade, discolor, and tear. It is through vinyl lettering.
Here is a website with how to start your own business in vinyl lettering.
Click Here!

Sometimes life goes by so fast. There is so much that needs to be done, that there is little time to stop and think. If you keep a journal or are trying to write your life story, you may find times when you don't have time to write anything or your entries may be very brief. Then there may be times when you can write long entries. Life doesn't seem to be evenly balanced. Even writing a blog, I find myself running out of time and energy to add to it. Then there are more calm times when I can spend a little time thinking and writing. That is the way life is and we need to deal with it. As you write think about the times that were so busy and full. Record the feelings you had during those times--like exhaustion, frustration, excitement. Record the feelings you had during calm times--like peace, gratitude, comfort, boredom, loneliness. The calm times can be the times to make up for what you couldn't do during the busy times. It is a good thing that life isn't always one way or the other. Writing about the different time of our lives can give us much needed perspective.

Purple and White Polka Dot Journal

by Lilleaf