I’ve decided to talk just a bit about my hobbies and pastimes – I have been talking about one of my ongoing pastimes at some of the business breakfast meetings I attend.
It was quite a surprise when I was asked to do the same subject for a talk to one of the groups out of my area (talking to your own group is one thing!) So I went to this business breakfast meeting in Corby, Northamptonshire, to combine business networking with presenting this talk on one of my ongoing pastimes…
I have a variety of hobbies/ pastimes (in fact I often tell people my hobby is hobbies). I like to be creative, I like water-colour painting, crochet, cross-stitch, gardening…all manner of pastimes. I also have an ongoing interest in Genealogy and my family tree, not least because my own maternal Grandmother was 100 in June this year. When you acknowledge the amazing fact that people have lived for so long and seen so much; but in all honesty you know that must come to an end, it begs the question “who knows about the things that my relative knows”?
We are so wrapped up in technology these days – it provides us with entertainment that is just there at the touch of a button (so to speak). As families we are so spread around the country or the world, we have little time in these days of rush, rush, rush to sit and listen to the family history, stories that once would have been the centre of family life. And let’s face it even if we did have the time, how many of us would take that time and use it to sit and talk or listen to someone else tell us about our heritage, our family history. Certainly our children don’t even really have an interest in the ‘old’ films we grew up with; they leave the room or change channels or play on the Wii or something similar!
Now I’m not suggesting we sit and dwell on things gone by, things we can’t change or things that we might regret…No, I don’t believe in regrets; what’s happened is gone, we can only learn and move on. Using what we have learnt from our actions/ reactions, being thankful for the opportunity to learn from them, (lol…sorry life lesson over).
My talk is about family trees, about taking an interest in our family history! Why? Because it shows us our progression as a human being, as a person, it gives us something to marvel at and celebrate our fortune, our movement forward…
I am working (sort of part-time) on my family tree, and I talked about the things I discovered to my breakfast group;
The occupations and how they have changed and the perception of that occupation today?! The longevity of life or lack of it, the constant procreation to ensure the family name, how the Father’s Christian name would traditionally be given to the first born son, how the actual names have changed?! These things interest me hugely, and I wanted to convey that to my listeners.
I believe I succeeded, there were a lot of follow-up questions; one of which was a question about a surname and how it came to be in existence, (it was believed that it had been made up because there appeared to be no trace of anyone else with that surname) I decided to investigate this believed anomaly…I only did the scantest of checks (as far as family history research goes), but found there to be quite a number of people historically with the name in question, (not hundreds you understand, we weren’t talking about Smith or anything commonly known); so without trying too hard I had already disproved a family belief to a degree; this is not always the way you want a story to go, but in this instance I feel it gave a measure of reassurance to the person concerned to understand they had real roots.
I get satisfaction from succeeding at a task or interest that has caught my attention, this instance had flamed my desire to find something of substance, to discover a link using my acquired knowledge, and that kind of determination and persistence is what I use to complete any task, hobby or pastime I undertake – I don’t like to fail or at least feel I have not given my best try.
Shouldn’t we be able to say that about our business, our relationships, and our whole life?!