Pulling off a Fulcrum

The "fulcrum" is one of my favorite scenes in Mission Impossible 3. Super spy Ethan Hunt is in Shanghai and has to retrieve an object from a heavily-guarded skyscraper. This place is so rife with machine-gun-toting goons that Hunt has to devise a scheme to distract them -- on a sloping roof.


He swings from one building like a pendulum (the writers call this a "fulcrum," but the movie has since been criticized for incorrect terminology) ... while his cohorts keep the guards occupied by launching baseballs at them. The question is, can Hunt make the jump to building #2 without plunging to his death and attracting the attention of the gun-wielding guards?


Here's the video from the movie, just in case you missed it:







Pretty much, I felt like I was getting ready to pull off my own fulcrum when it came time to finding a part-time job and getting cheaper health insurance. And like Mission Impossible, this Mission required careful forethought, strategic planning and deliberate analysis.


Potential pitfalls abounded:


1) Who would babysit my child in case of a snow day or in case he was sick? Who would get him off of the school bus if I needed to fill in a shift that crossed into his drop-off time?


2) How many hours a week could I work at the part-time job and still maintain my full-time schedule of magazine interviews and writing? How should I plan the calendar so that I could keep editors happy and at ease while I worked a non-cerebral job on the side?


3) What type of work would be least invasive into my "thinking time" that was required to generate creative magazine copy? What type of job wouldn't drain me so that I could accomplish the rest of my work?


4) Would I be willing to work nights and weekends if I did land a part-time job? What effect would that have on the rest of my life?


5) And most importantly ... there was one wildcard in my equation: Could my body take it? Would my legs and feet give out? Had I put in enough time at the physical therapist? Would I have enough energy? If called upon to lift something heavy, could I do it? And was I in good enough shape to stand on my feet, stay up with my gym workouts, do my writing, meet my deadlines, handle being a single mother ... and work a part-time job?


You see the problem.


In short ... to my mind, this looked about as daunting as jumping from one skyscraper to another in Shanghai.


As I was starting to think that this was a pie-in-the-sky idea, my uncle came to town.


What he told me next thoroughly plunged me into my Mission Impossible.


Tune in for the next part of the story ...