"The Book of Me, Written by You" - What do you treasure?

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations.

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations. - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations. - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf

The prompt for the week is:    

What do you treasure?

The Brief:

This week I am leaving the prompt wide open.

• You choose on what you treasure, the things, the people, 
• The things that are not seen, 
• The things that are seen yet not obviously treated as a treasure.

Treasure's can be found as long as you are looking. They also change over time.

When I was growing up and into my early 20's, I considered it a treasure if I could find myself in a job and had nice things around me. The higher the position the better. However, what is even better is the truth and respect. If you don't have either of these, then you have nothing.

My husband and I

In my 30's this had changed. It went to have to work to create a better life for my family, meaning my husband and our future children. It would also give us those children as they weren't "arriving" we we thought they would. In fact, we had to pay professionals to help us after loosing two children. These children were not born, but they were confirmed as pregnancies. One aborted by itself and one had to be taken, so my life could go on. I treasure each and every day I spent with each of these.

2003 One of our children who were never born

By my mid-30's, I learned to treasure the memories of people that were once in my life - my paternal grandmother, my paternal uncle, my children I never got to hold. Also, those who accept me as I am - my husband and nieces. Although those said nieces don't realize how much for them I did when they were growing up and am starting to realize they never will know, which is sad. The reactions they have had when they were growing up influenced my life and they don't even realize it. My husband and I discussed and looked at alternatives to having children - fostering? maybe but do we want to, adoption? I don't want to ever be told no because your not MY mother ever again, medical treatment like IVF? Maybe but that requires money we just don't have.

Jackie who we lost in 2012 and Buddy who keeps me company today

Now in my 40's, I'm almost resigned to never having children which makes those two we nearly had even more of a treasure. My husband's a treasure for being here with me and dealing with this. I treasure my dog, Buddy, because he knows when I just need those cuddles and kisses. I recently have found cousins - 1st, 2nd and even more cousins than I knew. I'm starting to cherish what we have in common and forge relationships with each and every one of them.

Lesson in life still pretty much remains the same - if you have the following in your life, you are richer than you'll ever know:

• Truth 
• Respect
• People who love you for who you are
• Love (remember this can range) for people who are in your life and who have given you and you ancestors life
• Pets can give you so much
• Children are more precious than gold

If you can make enough money to survive, and have what's outlined above, then you are your own king of your own castle and you have everything.  Think of the movie The Castle...

  Check back for the continuation of "The Book of me, Written by You" series.    

"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Journals & Diaries

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations.

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations. - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations. - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf

The prompt for the week is:  

Journals and Diaries

The Brief

The Brief

The Brief:

Do you keep a journal or diary?
How far back do they go? What do you record?
Where do you keep them?
Do you always buy the same one or vary them?
Have you inherited any?
Do you intend to pass along your journals or destroy them?
Pictures
Do you have a favourite?
What do you use to write with – biro, pencil, ink or fountain pen?

Do I have one?

Over the years, it has been mentioned to me countless times about keeping a journal or diary. However, I have to admit, I have tried over the years, but I don't have one and never really kept one for any time except for school assignments which I don't even have. 

When we did an IVF round, I did have an IVF Blog that I wrote in Microsoft Word. That's an interesting one and as we're getting ready to do our second IVF round in early 2014, its been interesting to go back and see some of the things that happened if we cannot remember. I'm going to  try and do another blog for the second IVF round as well.

There has been some updating of apps, so I might see if I can find the time (which is part of my problem), to start a journal of daily life. It might be interesting for those future generations to look back and see what I do in a day, even if its not very interesting. As we don't have any children, the journal and blogs might just be wasted time. A fact is that I'm going to sit down and record my memories of people, places, events as soon as I can. At the moment, my life is pretty full with life events (going away, having in laws visiting, classes that I'm taking are pretty lengthy, and sporting events - Bathurst on but we're not camping there this year) and that's only in the next 3 weeks this is happening.

I know I'll have to find out who wants to be the keeper of the family history information before I pass away, this way everything I've spent the last 8 years doing won't be lost and future generations won't miss out on the past.

Online Blogs

I do have 2 online blogs. One is for IT content that I talk about using WordPress. The other is entitled "Jo's Personal Blog" and that one I've had for a few years using Blogger. However, it doesn't seem like that, because when I lost my job this past year, I figured to start that blog up again and as the term blog had changed (from basically what you are going to do during the day to your thoughts on overall topics), so I went through most of the posts and either deleted them or put them into draft form where others couldn't see them. The upon talking to one of my teachers, I decided to start up my Jo's IT Blog to talk everything IT related. 

These I post in every week (Personal Blog over the weekend I publish, and IT Blog on Wednesdays I publish). On each I'm getting a pretty good handful of people - my personal blog has an average of about 30 views and my IT blog has about 200 people viewing and following. In the personal blog, the areas people access my blog from is unexpected - Australia, US and.... Europe! Yes, Europe and that I wasn't expecting. Hi to everyone that's in Europe!


Family Journals/Diaries

As far as I know, no one in my family has had either of these. I know when my grandmother was alive she would tell us about having the Nazis come through her childhood hometown and the

The Nazis at my Grandmother and Great Grandmother's hometown of Malkinia Gorna

fighting, but she never, to my knowledge, wrote any of it down. As I'm the family historian, or have been after asking questions for years and 8 years ago I started searching for some answers. As I've been looking for answers, I've been reading old newspaper clippings of the time right before or around the time my grandmother left Poland. I have to say, what she told me was one thing and reading newspapers back then give me the chills. Oh how I wish she was still here to ask even more questions!  Thankfully, my father is still with us, and I'll ask him more questions, but I have to wait until we visit again; however, I fear, that he won't know as much as I'm hoping he does. 
 

Warsaw Newspaper in 1920 a few days before my grandmother left Poland for the US.

I think the closest thing one side of the family ever got was a family bible. However, I was told, by my father Matthew, in August 2013, this bible was in shreds and couldn't really be read any longer, which broke my heart. This was a very old and pretty bible. It had gold leaf on the outside pages, very detailed pictures inside and there was a 2 page family history pages all filled out. To be told that all that information is gone is just heartbreaking.

Check back next week for the continuation of "The Book of me, Written by You" series.   - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/#sthash.KPTGu0so.dpuf

Check back next week for the continuation of "The Book of me, Written by You" series.