My Life's Work and Life's Necessities

I wrote this article in October of 2014. It is now April of 2016 and we no longer live in the Ottawa Valley, but in Gander, Newfoundland. I completed the work for a certificate in Medical Transcription in December of 2014 and received my certificate a couple of months later.

It’s a drizzly day in October and I am sitting at my desk wondering what I should write about. I should have finished working on the Timberline over a week ago. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, my schedule for the last two weeks seemed to fly out of the window.

This year has been an extremely busy for me and it is not quite finished. Since January, I have been working on a certificate in Medical Transcription and I will be finished in December. I have been working online at home for all of the courses, nine in all. The reason that I have been doing this is that Veterans Affairs decided last year that it was time for me to prepare to return to full employment outside of my home. Since they are providing an income for me and were willing to pay for the education upgrading, I was obliged to cooperate.  Thus far, it had not interfered with the publication of the Timberline. I do not anticipate any other problems with working on the Timberline.

Other people have had to do similar. It’s just disappointing that I do not have the credentials to be able to work in the genealogy field. Maybe, someday I will have those credentials. It will take time, money and effort on my part in order to accomplish this. Right now, I have the interest in doing this but I don’t feel that this is the right time. I have said before that everything happens for a reason. I don’t presently know why I was to prepare for employment in the medical field. However, I know that when the time is right, I will know the reason. It might be as simple as eventually being able obtain a position with an online company and working from home. It could just as well be that there is someone out there somewhere that I will be able to either help, or influence in a positive way and this is the route that I need to take in order to do this.

My time in the Ottawa Valley is not finished yet. It may be that there is still work that I need to do here. It is my firm belief that I will be here until the right time comes that we are to move, whether it is because my husband needs to be in another location, or I have completed the work that I was to do.

I believe that family history is a major part of the reason why we came to the Ottawa Valley in the first place. If I had been in the Niagara Region when I retired from the Military, I may not have learned what health problems that I have. I may not have been at home as long as I have been. Being here has given me the opportunity to start to learn how to research thoroughly for my ancestors. It has also given me the opportunity to visit Lanark County looking for records on the family that four years ago I knew next to nothing about. I have also learned that I have a rich French Canadian heritage that I have just begun to research. Come the new year, I will need to learn to fit family history around the future employment schedule that I will have.

I still want to do the day trips to find the records that I need, but I will need to take my future employment into consideration. I will also need to learn to balance employment, family history responsibilities, church responsibilities, and personal downtime in a manner that allows me the most flexibility.

I enjoy working on my family history. It is refreshing to me that when my brother asks whether I have found anything new, I can say, “Yes”, and then be able to let him know what it is that I have found. It is my life’s work that I am doing when I work on family history. The employment will give me the financial ability to do so.

In this article, I mentioned about the purpose of our time in the Ottawa Valley. I would like to emphasis that EVERYTHING happens for a reason. We may not know what the reason was until much later in life. Sometimes, things happen for a number of reasons. For example, our move to Newfoundland was for more than one reason. There are records in St John’s that I need to access for my family history. I have a number of mariners in my family history and these records will explain things that happened. 

The second reason was that my husband needed to go to a job that was not as demanding as his job was before we left the Ottawa Valley.

The third reason was that my husband and I both have a number of years of experience as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and that we have skills that we have already put to use here. It was as if the Lord had said that He would give us Newfoundland so that I could do my research and in return, we would assist in the teaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am so thankful that I have already had the opportunity of doing some research in St John’s and I know that I will be able to go again.