This Post has no Actual Content

Oh great, another introspective post ...

I was challenged to write a post that did not add any new content beyond what was presented in the first sentence. This is an opportunity to cover ground already trodden. It is a chance to revisit past thoughts and ideas and find fresh angles with which to present them. It certainly does not involve presenting new ideas - just taking the original ideas, rewrapping them, and presenting them again. It's like giving away a gift certificate to a store you never visit. Only it's a challenge; it's a provocation; it's a task available to be undertaken.

Accomplishing the goal is simple - just repeat what has already been said. One might, with only minimal hesitation, use the word: "rehash." Like a dog to his vomit, I return to a worthless sentence and gobble it up, only to chuck it back moments (or sentences) later. I can theoretically continue in this vein - without introducing new content - for as long as one would expect a post to run.

It's not about thinking outside the box - it's about looking at the same box from a different angle. One never knows how many sides it has until one runs out of sides. In the same way, one never can know how long a post can go without introducing new content until all content has been exhausted. And exhausting all possible content is - in a way - what I have been asked to do. I am to continue writing, not to introduce ideas, and hardly even to develop new ones. I write simply to fill the page; to bring the post to the appropriate length.

Here, in the fourth paragraph, I still have nothing new to say. I can only refer you back to the first sentence in the post, which presented the idea which has not only been the main thrust but the exclusive supplier of ideas for every sentence following, including this one, which is particularly lengthy for no particular reason. To reiterate, the beginning of this post is all you really needed to read to know what was going to follow.

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, or at least I'm willing to give it an honest shot. Parroting oneself is the key. Having established a basic groundwork in the first sentence, one merely has to duplicate that sentence - or parts of the sentence - over and over again until the correct post length has been reached. And it is in this sentence that I conclude my mirror-like remarks, and, without further ado (by which I mean the ado at the beginning of this post [echoed extensively, as I'm sure you are well aware]), draw this post to a close.