Do you remember DOS? I do.
DOS was the early system for home computer operations which allowed users to do all sorts of really basic things, with instructions written in Medieval Martian. I never did figure out the language, and I was totally relieved when my very young daughter took a hairbrush to the keyboard virtually destroying the whole computer. It was useless to me and took up way too much space.
Later I bought a simple word processor. It was a step up from a typewriter and a step down from a 1990’s PC. The biggest struggle I had with historical writing was that I was limited to libraries and card catalogues. If the library didn’t have the resource I was looking for, I had to apply for an interlibrary loan, which often weeks before I could either get a copy of the information I needed or get the actual book through mail.
When I went back to school fifteen years after graduating high school, I was finally introduced to the wonders of Windows and the internet. I could save so much time looking if the information was available online. I felt lucky to have found most of the Second Wife’s information on the internet in 2002, giving me a structure for her story. New information was being posted daily from all corners of the world and exponentially speeding up research results .
Fast forward to 2025. It was the year we finally bought a house in Kentucky and nearly the same month when I had my first epiphany. I did have a lot of roadblocks to my research at that time due to lack of internet for about a month, and later, another broken computer. But when I could get to a computer at the library, I was astonished to find that I could get answers to nearly every question I had and then some.
That wasn’t good for my ADHD. I would find an answer and come up with two more questions before I could get the link to the first answer into my research table. My biggest frustration was that many of those questions were relevant to me but completely irrelevant to my subject. I had to leave several pages open on the browser while finding the correct files to store every piece of information with AI making more suggestions causing me to leave even more pages open.
But enough was enough. I had to stop. The strange timelines created by my scatterbrained method of research caused the same information to be saved to several different locations or the wrong location, and occasionally the wrong external drive. Once I realized I finally had enough information to begin writing, I also realized that I would have to sort through more than a dozen files to get things into better order.
It took a while, but once I could place everything into chronological order for the first three chapters, I announced that I was ready to write.
Nope.
I opened the PPT I had moved chapter one’s information to and began writing my first bridge. by this time yesterday, I had come to the conclusion that I had so much information that my bridge to the first chapter had taken on a life of its own and that I needed to do some heavy editing before I could come up with a rough draft ready to proofread and publish
In short, I had too much information to publish yesterday’s blog post on time. That is why you will get yesterday’s post next Wednesday and this post in place of what should have been posted yesterday.
My goal is to have several posts scheduled for posting ahead of time so I can proofread and publish just before the Wednesday deadline.
If you find strange errors in today’s post, you can thank ADHD combined with TMI and AI. I didn’t have time to proofread, but I was determined to post; so I did.
StoriesFromthePast.com 