The Project: A Work in (Perpetual) Progress
Given a work in progress with no end in sight, one might be tempted to throw in the towel and turn one's attention elsewhere. I have several other works in progress. Most of them reached a point where an unresolved issue without an obvious solution prompted me to turn my attention elsewhere for a while, thinking I could get back to it later.
This one is different. Instead of turning to another project when I encounter a stumbling block, I can turn to another aspect of this one. While that adds to the files in the project folder, it keeps the emerging behemoth lumbering forward — and sprawling further — so I've taken time to establish a structure that can accommodate the expansion.
Put simply, it's a bookshelf that sits on top of a filing cabinet. One might be tempted to call it a bookcase, but ten titles and accompanying reference material should fit comfortably onto a single shelf.
Underneath the shelf, the filing cabinet is the virtual equivalent of the boxes of file cards I accumulated in my student days. As I ventured into unfamiliar areas and encountered new people, places, and events, I added basic details to library cards, filed them alphabetically, and frequently used the contents as footnotes in my assignments and seminar papers.
Given the nature of the beasts, those ten titles on the bookshelf are going to come with an abundance of footnotes and cross-references. Sixty years ago, each title would have contained its own footnotes. Today, hyperlinks within a text can lead to a central repository of footnotes that might have been reproduced numerous times across various texts. More significantly, for a work that continues to evolve, as long as the footnote remains in the same location, the content can be modified, and existing links will point to the new, more detailed content.
That means many of them are placeholder pages — a very basic outline of who, what, where, or why — with very basic references that I can add to as I encounter relevant material in the future.
So while there's a mass of material that continues to evolve, there is — hopefully — a structure to accommodate it.
