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But I didn't know rewriting the comp plan would be quite so horrifying. And now I am trapped like a trap in a trap. I said I'd do it, and time is short, and now I have to.
I wasn't thinking, in those meetings. I told my beloved principal planner, when he objected to certain paragraphs, that never mind, I'd just re-write them. I'd rewrite the whole thing, because it was all clunky and bureaucratic-speak, and it isn't really that long.
All of which is still true, but there's one thing I didn't count on, because I was paying attention to the meeting and not to the pages. But now I'm rewriting, and imaginary friends? Future me? Only now do I realize that there is no content in all those words and pages. Of course I can't rewrite it. There's nothing to re-write. 500 words on our original inhabitants and shifting demographics, and I'm not even sure what the point is supposed to be. Sure, I can rewrite those 500 words and make the cadences better, but I cannot manufacture more meaning. The whole thing could boil down to, "The area was originally occupied by peoples speaking a Mohican dialect, who were gone before the city we know today was founded. The city we live in was designed and built in the mid-1800s, as one of the world's first planned industrial cities. It was futuristic for its time; it flourished during the industrial revolution; it was populated mostly by several waves of European immigrants and their descendants, most notably the Irish. After the annexation of Puerto Rico following the Spanish-American War, they were followed by waves of immigration from the island. At its height the city had some 60,000 people; industrial decline and declines in high-end tobacco agriculture took their toll and now the population hovers around 38,000."
Maybe 120 words, we're done, everything else in there now is filler. And not even particularly good filler; and besides a lot of it needs fact-checking; and I am a swimmer who may never again see the shore. This must be done, but how? What if, in the end, nothing at all is left?
I wasn't thinking, in those meetings. I told my beloved principal planner, when he objected to certain paragraphs, that never mind, I'd just re-write them. I'd rewrite the whole thing, because it was all clunky and bureaucratic-speak, and it isn't really that long.
All of which is still true, but there's one thing I didn't count on, because I was paying attention to the meeting and not to the pages. But now I'm rewriting, and imaginary friends? Future me? Only now do I realize that there is no content in all those words and pages. Of course I can't rewrite it. There's nothing to re-write. 500 words on our original inhabitants and shifting demographics, and I'm not even sure what the point is supposed to be. Sure, I can rewrite those 500 words and make the cadences better, but I cannot manufacture more meaning. The whole thing could boil down to, "The area was originally occupied by peoples speaking a Mohican dialect, who were gone before the city we know today was founded. The city we live in was designed and built in the mid-1800s, as one of the world's first planned industrial cities. It was futuristic for its time; it flourished during the industrial revolution; it was populated mostly by several waves of European immigrants and their descendants, most notably the Irish. After the annexation of Puerto Rico following the Spanish-American War, they were followed by waves of immigration from the island. At its height the city had some 60,000 people; industrial decline and declines in high-end tobacco agriculture took their toll and now the population hovers around 38,000."
Maybe 120 words, we're done, everything else in there now is filler. And not even particularly good filler; and besides a lot of it needs fact-checking; and I am a swimmer who may never again see the shore. This must be done, but how? What if, in the end, nothing at all is left?