Where Should I Look for my Lost Motivation

My motivation done got up and left. Where I do not know. If I knew, I'd go out there and get it. But, alas, it is the last day of April and it is cold, grey, damp, gloomy, and I think I saw some snow flurries. So, if my motivation is outside, I think I will leave it out there. I am, at least, motivated to crochet.

I think if I could just find one little Holmes clue, I'd find some motivation. But I've been looking at shakey leaves and military records and Nathaniels and Samuels and Benjamins thick on the ground and who is who and some insist that although he is the son of Sam and Betty, he is also the son of Shivaree Holmes and died in Stockton, New York.

I found a Benjamin Holmes who died in Feb 1850 in Oswego. That's about sixty miles away from Brownville, This Benjamin was a millwright and died of consumption. I stuck that information in there with the notation "needs verification." The date is right, and the fact that I can't find any civil war records that seem to fit my Benjamin tells me that I may be on the right trail. However, I have to blaze it a little further in both directions to prove it. The other Benjamin married a Betsy Taylor and lived a lot longer. If Find a grave didn't say he was the son of Shivaree, I'd probably be on that trail, but I just can't justify it. Shivaree and Samuel are just too different names, and the mothers are different as well, although I can't find Shivaree's wife at the moment.

I can't just keep on writing freewrights. Perhaps they are a good exercise and lead me places, but so far, no, I just have words on paper that are rather meaningless at this time.

I have had no answer from the Brownville church. I don't know if that's good or bad. I consider it good manners to acknowledge receipt of an email, but not everybody else does. Perhaps they are busy digging in dusty tomes in a seldom used, smelly room, and will come back with oodles of information on my Runaway Sam. (I have my doubts.) There is nothing to do but wait.

I thought maybe I would make a cover and the start of a book. That's just putting off the inevitable nitty gritty of writing, isn't it? Or, would it be motivational to look at a cover and a Bibliography and think, "I have a book in the making." I wonder what will be in the middle of it by the time I'm done.