Those of you who have follow up the dedication of this site to the memory of Lucy and Belinda will not be surprised to know that I have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Running this web site is a kind of therapy and helps me to keep my stress levels down, while your messages of appreciation (and your donations to support a Hertfordshire mental health charity) help me to avoid becoming too depressed.
It is obviously important that I avoid allowing this site to become a cause of stress. While I try and respond to queries, etc., as soon as possible, I have to take a laid back approach when a queue builds up in my in-box. Everything would come to a halt if I started to worry about the number of unanswered requests. The saying "More Haste, less speed" very much applies to me in such circumstances.
The present position is that a queue started to build up towards the end of October - when I got about 6 messages that required action in one day (the average is about one). Then early in November I developed some serious looking medical symptoms and while things fortunately returned to normal after a couple of days I will need to have an in-depth investigation to find out what triggered the problem and whether more drastic action is needed to avoid it happening again.
So what of the future. The site runs bests if I have a steady flow of new messages, so I am setting up a new empty in-box and am asking you all to keep your messages coming in - particularly news items, updates for existing pages, and pictures for display which need very little attention. All outstanding emails have been transferred to an separate folder and I will try and clear one or two a week. Hopefully most of the recent backlog will be cleared by the New Year. If your email is one I have put on hold please let me know if you have new information to add or have solved the problem and no longer want an answer. If you haven't heard in the next six weeks please send me a reminder.
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This is the newsletter for the Genealogy in Hertfordshire Web site. Comments on this blog are moderated and may be transferred to the web site where appropriate. If you have a local or family history query you want answered you must use "Ask Chris" - See box in right hand column. Anonymous comments cannot be answered.