Motivation Monday - What is My Motivation?

Example of a logic puzzle, from a forum posting at the Stumped part of forums at Puzzle Baron's Logic Puzzles.

Or more like, where is my motivation?

I'm having a day when I can't decide what I will write about my ancestors, or even which ancestors.

Why do I do this constant research anyway?  As a child I enjoyed solving those logic puzzles, the kind still sold in stores, where you have a grid and a series of incomplete clues, and you have to solve the entire puzzle by going around and around with all the clues.

Penny Press/Dell magazines, you've seen them around I'm sure.

Genealogy is like solving one of those puzzles, yet in a way that relates to me personally.

What motivates other genealogists?

Back in the old days (1998), a professor named Ronald Lambert, professor of sociology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, wrote a 4-part article on the subject at GlobalGenealogy.com, Roving Reporters section, "A Study of Genealogists & Family Historians," that I found very interesting.

• A Study of Genealogists & Family Historians - Part I (A Profile of the Membership of The Ontario Genealogical Society and A Study of Genealogists & Family Historians)
• A Study of Genealogists & Family Historians - Part II (LOOKING FOR GENEALOGICAL MOTIVATION)
• A Study of Genealogists & Family Historians - Part III (Becoming a Family Historian)
• A Study of Genealogists & Family Historians - Part IV (The Family Historian Role)

Mind you, back then, the Internet was still very young and genealogy was nowhere as easy as it is now.  You had to be dedicated and willing to spend many years and quite a bit of money garnering all the necessary evidence that can be reasonably collected online now in an afternoon.





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