Letters

I had one of those days at work yesterday.

There was a letter that was to be sent home to the girls who are getting ready to go en pointe and I was supposed to fix just a couple of things in it, but as I sat down to fix those two things I could not stop.  The original note was a mish-mash of about three different notes, so there was redundancy and wordiness and poor organization.  The part of me that wanted to be a writer rebelled, nay, refused to send out a note in that condition.  So I spent the next hour completely revamping it.  I fixed grammar, removed repetitiousness, and even included titled subsections and changed the font from Times New Roman (blech!) to the infinitely easier to read Arial.  A copy was shown to my boss and was returned to me with the instruction that, while she appreciated the time and effort I put into, she still preferred the original.

I'm serious when I say that you could have pushed me over with a feather.  What?!  How is that possible?  My version was obviously SO much better!  How could she possibly like that mess of a note compared to my organized, cleaned up, grammatically correct masterpiece?!  How? I ask you!  HOW?!!

I sat dumbfounded while my poor co-worker, Sara, (who was acting as the go-between) explained to me what our employer wanted.  I conceded that perhaps the titled subsections were a bit... severe, but I could not imagine that I had changed the rest of it that much to warrant a complete dismissal of the whole letter!  I was shocked.

Now, you may be thinking, "Holy race car! (as my eldest would exclaim)  It's just a letter!  It's not that important!  Just fix it like the boss lady liked it and send it on it's way!"

That, my friends, is the crux of this whole thing, because I knew I was being insane.  That is was JUST a letter.  A letter that had gone out countless times before in it's original state with no ill effects.  And I tried.  I really did try  to return it to that mess and not care, but I couldn't even type one word.  My fingers were physically incapable of typing one single letter.  It was in my gut, my very soul even, that I should not let that note go out like that knowing that mine was better!

So, I took out the subsection titles, returned the font to Times New Roman (as was requested), and changed it from Dear Parent to Dear Student.  That's all I could do.  I showed it to the one in charge, she said "That will work", it was copied and distributed.

I was left feeling exhausted and emotionally drained.  Over a silly little letter.  But it was better.  It really was.