One last update before I start wondering aloud why I’m not in bed already.
I’ve spoken about my Orange Juice Principle a number of times in a number of formats, but never at the length and with the precision I managed for my Smile and Nod column over at The Escapist this week.
The Orange Juice Principle is based on a time when I wanted a glass of orange juice, the simplest thing in the world, but was prevented from initially having it through a comedy of errors - all preventable - that took almost an hour to overcome. An operation of a few seconds - pouring a glass of orange juice - exploded to almost an hour.
From that single experience was born my passion for process control and project management, and my five year career as a production manager in professional theater. Give it a read if you’ve ever wondered how you can make complex things seem less so. Because, basically, nothing is really ever complex. No one, single thing, anyway. All complex problems, at their core, are built of individual, simple, obstacles.
Anyway, in the mad, chaotic cluster fuck that’s been my life for the past six - eight months, I somehow managed to forget about the Orange Juice Principle, and last weekend, when all I wanted to do was drive to the coast and buy a boat, it came back to bite me in the ass. I love being humbled by my own humanity. No, really, I do. That’s not sarcasm. I love it. Without moments like those, I’d probably have nothing interesting to write about. I mean, it sucks at the time, but now, after the fact, we can sit here and laugh and laugh.
Oh, that time I wanted to buy a boat but instead spent the afternoon at the DMV, hahahaha! Sigh.