Method v. Madness
I am an ongoing study in contradictions
My third child struggled through elementary school. He had a lot of difficulty dealing with the daily onslaught of confusing social interactions with teachers and other students. He would get overwhelmed and angry, then shut down, verbally. He wouldn’t speak, but he found ways to show us how angry he was.
Over time, we learned that several of his behaviors pointed to Autism spectrum disorder. Getting to that point and learning coping strategies took a monumental effort - most of which fell on my wife, because he would listen to her more than anyone else. But, those are all stories for another day.
Since his 5th grade year1 our family has spent a lot of time learning about “the ‘tism” and learning to see traits and behaviors associated with ASD in ourselves and our family. One key thing that everyone should know about ASD is that the person who gets the diagnosis may feel isolated and “weird” - but my son has learned that he is not all that different from the rest of us.
Some of the signs of ASD, such as obsessive behaviors, “stimming,” and repetition of sound patterns or vocalizations (a very mild form of echolalia) are things that I’ve experienced my whole life without knowing they had anything to do with each other. I have never been evaluated for ASD, so I may or may not fall on the spectrum - but if we think about ASD as a collection of inherited traits with variations in intensity, it’s easy to see how passing some of my traits to my children led to at least one of them falling on the spectrum.
When humans think about a “disorder” it usually has negative baggage. However, the echolalia has played a huge role in my development as a musician, and my obsessive behaviors have driven most of my family history work.
This leads me to my point today: obsession can take two forms - one orderly and methodical, and the other quite chaotic.
Form One: A Whole Lotta Structure
Part of my lifelong fascination with family trees comes from the neat, orderly vision of an expanding ancestry. You can see evidence of my love of structure in the WikiTree profiles I’ve built over the years. Start with my Grandpa Bob’s profile and marvel at the tantalizing neatness of the tree that displays if you hit the green “Ancestors” button.
Whenever I’m “working up” a tree, it is easy to see where the gaps are, where I should go next, and how far I have to go to “complete” a particular tree. (Not that anyone’s tree is ever “complete.”)
There is a different type of orderliness when I work “down” a tree. If you look at the profile of John Callin and click on the green “Descendants” button, there is a definite structure there, but it is less predictable, and you can’t tell how complete it is. Still, there is a visual indication when someone who should have children present does not yet have a set of profiles attached - and building those can follow a methodical and orderly process.
Form Two: Rabbit Holes
One of the dangers of any research project is the tantalizing lure of a rabbit hole.
Many of the essays you read on this blog only exist because I was trying to work on something else and noticed that something was missing or didn’t add up. All of the best advice for tracing your family will tell you that sometimes you have to go out of your way to research in-laws or siblings to find the information you need for your main focus - but sometimes when you do that, you get pulled into an interesting, if unrelated, side project.
Chasing leads and pulling threads to make sense of what the records tell me - or to figure out what they are hiding - takes up most of my time. I may aspire to take an orderly and methodical approach, but the rabbit holes are where I experience the most joy.
The Tension
There are a lot of excellent resources out there for you to learn how to be more orderly and disciplined in your approach to research. I follow several people here on Substack who give me good advice, and I try to apply their suggestions and methods. Those suggestions can help you plan where to look for information and guide your overall strategy for building the family history you want to build. If you follow their advice, you will have a solid battle plan.
Making a good plan is a good coping strategy - and at the end of the day, we all try to build coping strategies that capitalize on our strengths and minimize our weaknesses, whether we do that consciously or not. The most successful plans for me tend to be the ones that use my curiosity to overwhelm my tendency to procrastinate.
But as someone wisely said, “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” At least, in this case, the enemy is cute and interesting.
So, what strategies work best for you? (I plan to drop some links to fellow Substackers in the comments if you don’t!)
In Maryland, 5th grade is the last year of elementary school, followed by three years of middle school, and a four-year high school. 5th-graders are typically 10 or 11 years old.
The only thing that has worked for me is making a research log as I go. If I know I have to log what I’m looking at, I won’t look if it is taking me off track.