It's The Little Things

When it comes to working on cars, I am the king of getting side tracked. I refer to these interruptions as "micro projects". This is when you are already working on a project and get sidetracked on another, smaller project. Sometimes micro projects can balloon in sub-micro projects. Sub-micros are when your micro project leads you into yet another micro project, so you end up getting distracted even more! As you can see, it can quickly spiral out of control which is probably why my projects seem to stay projects way longer then I expected.

Another category under micro projects is what I call Domino's Law. Domino's Law is the result of The Domino Effect and Murphy's Law colliding together in a most abnormal way, almost as if a Hadron Super Collider was used to join these two forces. This bastardized marriage usually results in wallets being emptied and/or heavy credit card usage. Domino's Law is very prevalent in my latest project car, a '56 Chevy called "Time Warp". Time Warp seems to be plagued by Domino's Law, even though I am continually offering up monetary sacrifices in an attempt to keep it at bay. It seems like every time I even look at the car I find something that needs attention. I think I subconsciously avoid working on Time Warp because it seems like when I am replacing something, all I have to do is look at the surrounding area and I will find a problem! Loose bolt, wore out bushing, missing screw, rust hole, leaking gasket, etc, etc. I think you get the picture and I am sure many of you have experienced the same thing. Well now you have a name for it, Domino's Law!

Domino's Law is unavoidable unless I were to put on blinders or worse yet, ignore the obvious. Gasp! I can barely type it let alone actually do it. I am just too much of a perfectionist. Now when it come to the micro projects, I just need to manage them better. Regardless of how many micros or sub-micros I encounter, I need to keep the original project goal in sight. Now if I can just convince the perfectionist side of me to stop being so critical of every little thing, I might actually get something done!

An oil leak that I noticed when I was supposed to be tearing down the steering linkage...