When you set up the pieces properly, you’re okay when they fall.
Murphy’s law says that everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Murphy doesn’t know how robust my systems are.
I woke up at 4:30am to catch the 5:01 train to Paris for my 6:45am operation[1]. If I’d missed it? I had another train half an hour later that would get me in 7 minutes after my desired check-in time. Robust enough and didn’t need it.
They were to constrict my pupil, wiggle my embedded lens, and release the edge of my iris that was caught under the lip of the plastic. The nurse gave me dilation drops instead of constriction. Clearly their system was not robust enough. Fortunately, medicine is, and my surgeon just flooded my eye with constricting agent. The constrictor won.
Next, immediately back to Étampes to do a 10am walkthrough with the French leasing agent. I needed to be out the door 10 minutes after my surgery to make the train to be 7 minutes late for meeting the agent. It took me 15. I was 2 minutes late for the train, but the train was 3 minutes late. Insufficiently robust? An uber would have backstopped the train. And if all else failed, Partner was at the apartment and capable of doing the walkthrough.
Then back to Paris for a follow-up appointment at 2. We missed the train by 5 minutes. It didn’t matter, we could have missed three more trains and been fine. The next train was late. Still fine.
At the appointment, the doctor explained the suture he has placed in my eye. “When does it need to come out?” “At some point.” “What do you mean ‘at some point’? Two weeks? Two months? Two years?” “Not before two months, and two years is probably fine.” Surprisingly robust.
I set up today so nothing could fail. I selected this surgery because it’s hard to go terribly wrong.
Capping your downside is a good strategy. But the safe choices aren’t always the ones that everyone would think they are. E.g.:
- Surgery in a foreign country where you speak the language at a foreign-language-college-student level
- Scalpeling your eye
- Inserting plastic into the eye
- Suturing that same eye
- Pursuing follow-up corrective surgery for a minor adjustment on the same day as you’re moving out of your apartment and leaving the city for good.
We packed an umbrella today. We left it in the storage locker at the train station. It rained. We enjoyed watching the rain fall in sheets while under the plentiful overhang of the train station. Twice.
I generally sleep 8 hours per day so I have the strength to power through days like today.
Julian: 1
Murphy: 0
[1] All times are approximate.
Julian Wise 