Revisions

In the production of a TV show, things change. Scripts change, schedules change, camera shots change. Some changes require detailed explanation, but on many shows, changes are "announced" with colored pages. If you are given a colored script page to incorporate into your white script, you know that something has changed on that page. If you are given a schedule on colored paper, you know that the day's order of events has changed. Often, there is even a designated sequence of colors for "first revision," "second revision," and so on. Sometimes it seems like a tremendous waste of paper, and yet, it works (well, at least most of the time).
 
Life comes with lots of revisions. How many times do the events of your day actually go in the order that you planned? How often do your interactions actually follow an expected script? The tricky thing is, in life, you don't get the "heads up" of a colored piece of paper. You just find out in the moment that something has changed. You don't have the luxury of everyone being "on the same page." You all just have to catch up together.
 
Sometimes, I wish that life had a color-coded revision system. Impossible, I know, but wouldn't it be nice to see change coming (in the hands of a capable PA)? Wouldn't it be nice to know that others could see the changes as you did, so that you could react in unison, rather than haphazardly? Wouldn't it be nice to have a cheat sheet if you were having trouble keeping up with the changes?
 
In life, though, we are pretty much on our own when it comes to revisions. It's tricky sometimes. But I guess the good news is that handling life's revisions on our own puts us way ahead of the curve when we work in TV production.