Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Excites You about Genealogy Research?

Randy Seaver came up with a different approach to genealogy for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music here) is:

1.  What excites you about genealogy research?  What part of performing genealogy and family history research really excites you — what keeps you coming back day after day?

2.  Write your own blog post, or add your response as a comment to this blog post or in a Facebook Status post or note.

These are my thoughts.

• I think the puzzle-solving aspect of research is what I enjoy the most.  I like figuring out how one person is related to another, where an immigrant came from, or just when someone was born.  I enjoy hunting for clues that will help give me an answer.  One of the reasons it is so exciting is that every family is unique; although there are many similarities between different families, every family's history is going to be different in some ways, so I am never reading the same story twice.

• I love connecting with relatives, even if they're distant.  It's fun to figure out exactly how I'm related to the cousins I communicate with and which family lines we have in common.  I sometimes have been disappointed when the cousin doesn't feel the same way, but most of the time the enthusiasm is mutual.

• Something else that's fun is finding new kinds of documents to help with family history.  I always tell people that I am obsessive and that I want to find every single piece of information out there, no matter how insignificant someone else might think it is.  Everything adds up to a fuller picture of the person and family I am researching.

I'm glad Randy enjoys writing up documentation, because I sure don't!  It's a necessary evil, but it definitely does not excite me.