After working on family history projects for several years and being casual and unorganized, I believe it is time to MAKE A LIST. I propose to record each of the projects I have undertaken, and identify their present status.
The order of these entries will be the order they occur to me, that is to say, random. It's the way my mind seems to work.
I hope that once I have them all written down, some element of organization will suggest itself and I will be able to make swift progress thereafter. The only organizational theme I know about at this point came from a fellow enthusiast, who undertakes one (and one only) family history project at a time, completing it before starting another. This strategy while effective in her case is of no use to me as I have MANY projects already started, and a few actually finished.
So here goes.
1. Family Letter. In the 1930s and 1940s my mother and her siblings had a circulating letter among themselves. Using that model I checked for interest among my first cousins on my mother's side, and then started one up. The first round began in January 1997. The fifth round is now en route. With 25 cousins on the route and an average of two years per round, each holds the letter for an average of about a month. Doesn't work out that way, of course; the range of time has been from one day to six months. The "letter" when it comes around is a substantial package, containing the letters from each, along with pictures and memorabilia. Each cousin adds his or her new letter and pictures, and removed the old one when sending it onward.
This being established, I repeated the process with the first cousins on my father's side. The rounds have been slower with this group, with the letter being "lost" for more than two years with one cousin, and with four countries being involved, not just Canada.
Status: ongoing.