My “Before”

Sunday 11 October 2026

After Friday I needed a quiet Sunday, so I spent it doing the least exciting thing possible. I rewrote the plan.

The write-up I started in September had become a document about a project that might happen. Since then, four people have said yes, and the project has a name. So the document needed to stop saying “I hope to” and start saying what happens next, and by when. Papa calls the new version the foundation document. I call it the thing I check before I start anything on a Sunday.

The biggest change is the legal map. The solicitor’s warning on the Post-It turned into rules:

• General, not detailed. The map answers the questions someone my age actually asks, not the ones a lawyer would.
• The same three questions for every country. Who decided you would be your parents’ child, and how. What record of your birth exists. What you can find out, and from what age.
• Every page shows the date it was last checked, and says plainly that laws change and this is not legal advice.
• Nothing goes public until one of the two lawyers has checked it. The UK page goes to the UK one, the US page to the US one.
• Two countries to start, because I have two people who can check them. Italy comes next, when I find someone who knows Italian law.

The second change is the timeline. It has dates now, and the dates are mine to miss:

• By the end of October: a private draft of the website. A beta. Not public, not finished, but real enough to click through.
• Ms. Shafqat sees it first. She is the teacher attached to this, and she asked the right first question, so she gets the first look.
• Then the two lawyers, who were promised a first version by the end of the month. They see the whole site, and especially the legal pages they will be checking.
• Late December, after exams and everything else: a soft launch, but only if five things are true first. Both legal pages checked and dated. A safeguarding statement Ms. Shafqat has approved. A named adult as safeguarding lead. The acknowledgement of Professor McLean on the About page. And at least three adults who have agreed to be named as advisors. If any one of those is missing, the launch waits. I wrote that line twice so I would believe it.

Two things moved. The Cambridge email I said I would send in October is going to wait until next year, when I have something to show. And Episode 1 of Who Knew Me First?, which is me answering my own five questions, is waiting for something more important than my schedule: a decision with my dads about how much of my story goes on a public website under my name. We will decide that together by the end of November. I am fine with that. It is a story with other people in it.

So: two weeks to build a beta. On top of a case competition deck due on the same day, and swim season, and AP Physics. I have done the arithmetic and it works if I stop rewriting plans.

— D.