Unsinkable

Molly's in a panic…

I, on the other hand,  am unreasonably calm, with bouts of anxiety. The trouble is that the bouts of anxiety hit right around 10:30, when I should be wrapping up my work and heading for bed. Those who know me know that I'm a bit of a late night guy already, but this is getting bad. Usually, if I'm up late, I'm working on something. These days, I'm just up, unable to really concentrate, unable to sleep. Eventually, exhaustion takes me, and I stumble off to bed. 

On the up side, I'm getting a chance to watch some of the excellent movies in our collection. I'm also spending a fair amount of time running through some of the major points we'll hit once we leave for ET. I share a trait/outlook/behavior, though I am a bit less compulsive about it, with one of my very best friends (Jemiah): Scenario-vision™. Essentially, this involves running through as many possible ways for a given situation to play out, and evaluating them where possible. There are two keys to successfully using Scenario-vision™:

1. Objectivity: Step-back and try to make sure that you are seeing as many possibilities as possible; Even those you'd prefer not to consider. This is particularly difficult and important when dealing with elements beyond your control
2. Modularity: Consider each scenario and a collection of smaller interrelated sub-scenarios

Example:

     Our arrival in Milwaukee

• Getting the luggage
• Rose is asleep
• I carry her and my luggage
• Molly carries her and I carry the extra luggage
• Rose is awake
• I carry her and my luggage, if she lets me
• Molly carries her and I carry the extra luggage
• She wants to walk
• Pull her own luggage
• We carry her luggage
• Finding the car
• We all ride the shuttle to the parking lot
• I ride the shuttle and come back for them
• The ride home
• Will Rose get in the car readily?
• Surface streets
• Will take a bit longer
• Freeway
• Might be a bit intense
• Meeting Dillon
• …
• Seeing the dogs
• …
• First night
• …
• …

This is really an extreme (and sort of crappy) simplification of a process that goes on in my head over the course of hours and days, running as a background process and producing, essentially, an n-ary (but preferably a binary tree) tree of possibilities.

When we are actually in the situation, I won't be thinking about this process, and I won't be trying to stick to some ridiculous set of predefined possibilities. That's not the function of Scenario-vision™. The real function is to turn completely unknowns, which most people are rather uncomfortable with, into semi-knowns, and to allow me to identify some of the "What do we do if…" questions, and begin to sort out solutions. 

Really, it just makes me feel better. 

This entry was posted on Friday, July 14th, 2006 at 10:46 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.