Two And A Half-Years Into My Genealogical Journey

How you view the culture/cultures you are descended from does not need to be dictated by the ways others do. I noticed in the genealogical community people have a more aspirational way of looking at things. They are scouring documents about what boats their family sailed on to America, working on their family trees, and garnering a larger grasp of their origins and how these fit into a global context. For instance, we are all more mixed than we think, and we are all related to people we may love and hate.

Sometimes I am afraid to share my opinions, but I realized so few people watch my livestreams or read my blog posts, and only those who follow these are kind of in the know. I am always respectful and feel confident in my opinions, but I only seem to get comments on my Facebook posts when something captures someone’s interest. Most of the time no one really comments anyway, but some days I seem to garner a lot of comments out of the blue.

I truly believe people can take pride and interest in whatever culture they are from. I think we should have more cultural holidays celebrating the origins of various cultures so people can reflect on their own family history. Not everything is meant to focus on a negative stereotype. I like the idea of genealogical holidays to trace the origins of one’s family with the emphasis on perhaps taking an Ancestry DNA test, and then really working on your family tree. For instance, I guess one thing I am always most excited about is finding the photograph of my great-grandmother Helen  Hanna. I also found her passport document, which I am sharing part of here.

Part of my great-grandmother Helen’s passport document when she left Syria to come to America.

When I discuss wanting a holiday to celebrate genealogy of a particular group, I like to reflect on a positive aspect of this, such as finding the passport document of my great-grandmother. I spent four months looking for this document and was elated to finally stumble across it. How many people have searched for the passport document of their great-grandmother?

Genealogy Experiences And I Am “Boring”

For years I have been fascinated with genealogy and wanted to know more about my family tree. I was curious about my Syrian roots, and a few months ago I met a distant cousin who told me more. I thought this connection was intriguing and interesting, and this person would sometimes message me on Facebook. I had no clue our friendship would end so abruptly.

On my days off I like to work on my blogs, and I post things on Facebook. My cousin sent me a picture of a cat, and I said how sweet. I post a lot of cat drawing and photographs to my wall, so I thought he was just sending this because I like such things. He then proceeded to tell ask me if I am boring, and if I work. He told me that work would make me not boring. I asked him where this was coming from, and he said something I posted made him think I was boring. Perhaps this was a translation error, but I do not think so. The cousin speaks and writes fluently in English and seems to convey his thoughts easily. I told him my posts are not designed to entertain everyone, and he said something about a bad translation and sorry.

Maybe I was too sensitive, but I told him this hurt my feelings, and he did not seem to respond to that. He deleted me after this exchange, which is fine. It kind of changes some of my feelings about genealogy. Here I was so interested an intrigued in learning more about their family and culture, and in the end he just told me he thinks I am boring. I asked nice questions about his family and was only ever interested in how they lived. Even though I told him about my job and my interests, he seemed to think I had none. I definitely have hobbies, but I have to attribute this to my posts not being exciting to him. I cannot change someone’s perception of me, and that is okay.

I felt like a bucket of cold water was dumped over my head, and I am left feeling bewildered. However, if people think I am boring that is their choice. In the future I am not going to respond to comments like this. Most people seem good at ignoring texts they do not like, and I need to do the same. I can just ignore a question I do not like and leave it at that. So it is interesting to learn more about where your ancestors came from, but you might just find out that they think you live a boring life in America. My genealogy adventures are not over, just a bit more tempered at the moment.

Answering Survey Questions On 23andMe

I have answered 96% more survey questions than the average 23andme user.

I enjoy taking the surveys on 23andme, but today I had logged in to see if they had updated their ancestry regions in my report, but this is still saying “soon to come”. It sounds like the new customers who have just purchased a kit are more likely to see this update before people who have been on the site for awhile.