Who am I? Why am I here?

While this may be a deep and meaningful philosophical question, I’m really only asking “Why am I here blogging?” I started this blog about two years ago and I post occasional musings when I think of something interesting, or at least that I think might be interesting, to write about.

To some extent, my blog was to document my progress on my Complete Unst Family Tree, but if that’s all I wanted, it would be a private journal, not a public blog. So, Why am I here?

Behind it all is a hope that I’m not the only one that would find this interesting. I know that family history is a huge business now with hundreds of thousands of people digging into their own history. I enjoy reading the blogs of other amateur genealogists and so I hope the same is true when others read mine. I know that there are common problems faced by those who try to follow their ancestors, and so writing about problems I find; strategies I use when searching for people; tools I come across; or just general hints may help others. To this end, when I write a post, I share it with Ancestry.co.uk for other amateur genealogists to read. There may be other places I should share links too – all suggestions gratefully received.

I also am writing specifically about the family history of part of Shetland – Unst specifically, and there are people originally from Unst all over the world, who like to read a little bit about their distant home. Whether it is recognisable place-names with maps to peruse; photos of places they may recognise; or occupations that their ancestors may have had, I hope to spark memories of the Auld Rock to far-flung ex-Shetlanders. I very occaisionally share links to my posts in the Stories n Photos fae Unst Group if I think it is of interest to non-genealogy people.

So I guess my target audience is other amateur genealogists and people with a Shetland connection. In the cases where a reader is both, then even better, but I hope some of my posts appeal to one or the other without the need for an overlap – otherwise it’s a much smaller set of people! For those readers who are interested in both, I share my posts with the Shetland Genealogy and Family History Group .

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Morag, and I come from the island of Unst in the very North of Shetland – hence the blog name “Unst Morag”. I don’t live in Shetland anymore as I got a job further south, but I’ve always been interested in family history since I was a teenager. After years of not thinking about it, I got started again a couple of years ago, prodded to some extent by the plethora of TV adverts for Ancestry and a well-timed trip home to visit my parents in Unst where I fell upon the old paper family tree.

I’m starting 2015 with an aim to write posts a little bit more frequently. Looking at my stats (which WordPress helpfully provides) I can see that on average I post something once every month. When I look back on this post in a years time, I think I will be happy if I’ve managed to post, on average, twice a month, i.e. doubling my writing rate. I don’t want to write something if I have nothing interesting to write about, but I’m sure I have more things to write about than I currently do. I’m hoping to get a little more inspired this year.