What I Learned from the Alphabet Challenge

Yesterday I posted my round-up of all of my posts from the weekly Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. “Challenge” was the key word – what sounds like a simple concept proved to be rather challenging. I participated because I knew the challenge would “force” me to post at least once a week. It wasn’t mandatory to post every week, but that was part of the personal challenge for me. I discovered that it was an incredibly creative exercise – much more creative than I originally thought. All of the submitters each week almost always had a different idea about what represented a particular letter, and I found that some of my original ideas fell by the wayside as a new letter approached and I came up with a new idea instead.

All in all, it was a very worthwhile exercise. If you are looking to make a commitment to yourself to post to your own blog, I highly encourage you to try something similar. For something even more daring, you could post a different letter each day and go through the entire challenge in less than a month. Or for a more relaxed pace, try one per week (as I did) or even one per month. Eventually you will make your way through the alphabet!

As I said, I found this challenge to be a good creative outlet. I’ve come up with some other ways to use the A through Z method to highlight other areas of family history:

• Surnames or first names in your family tree through the alphabet
• Family Photographs through the alphabet
• Place Names from your family tree through the alphabet
• Highlight record sources from A to Z
• Highlight research techniques from A to Z
• Favorite websites used for genealogy from A to Z
• Family Memories through the alphabet
• Your genealogical “bucket list” through the alphabet

The possibilities are as endless as your own creativity. I’m still pondering which A to Z series I will challenge myself with next!

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