> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://acmewong.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Orange Bucket - URL: https://acmewong.com/orange-bucket/ - Published: 2026-09-03T04:07:46.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-03T04:07:46.000Z - Author: Acme Wong It's 2016 and I'm sitting at my desk, waiting for the clock to strike noon. I'm in the office, at my computer, pretending to work at the last "real job" I would ever work at, just counting down the minutes. I'm about to go on a secret mission, see? But I only have 30 minutes because we take short lunches here. Go time. I let my boss know I'm taking my lunch and then I microwave a frozen organic bean-and-cheese burrito, jot down a quick idea, microwave beeps, I scarf the burrito down, grab my backpack, and make my way to the parking lot. I walk past my car, toward the very back of the lot. There's a row of tall bushes, or maybe they're small trees, I'm not good with plants, but I think would make a good background for my video. I set up my rinky-dink $19 Amazon tripod and lock in my "pretty good for 2016" point-and-shoot camera. Pulling my phone out of my jeans I check the time. It's 12:09pm. Crap, only 21 minutes left. I adjust the angle of the camera, do one of those quick nervous exhales, hit record, get in front of the camera, and start rambling about the idea that I wrote down earlier when I was waiting for my organic frozen burrito to turn into something almost edible. The video runs longer than expected. I rush back to the break room, pull out my MacBook, remove the SD card from the camera, insert it into my laptop, open iMovie, import the video, do some really quick edits and play a few seconds to make sure the audio sounds okay. I export the video, upload it to YouTube, give it a title and a quick description, and it's done. Boom. I made something and put it out there for the world to see. Or not see, since most of the videos I posted that summer received zero views. Still though, it was part of my "67 Vlogs of Summer" challenge that I was doing and I did it! But after day 67, I was so done. Before I even completed the challenge I knew I wouldn't continue it. I couldn't, not the way that I had been approaching it. I was winging it every single day. I wouldn't know what I would film, where I would film, when I would edit it, or anything until the day of, the hour of, the minute of. Every single one of the 67 videos that I uploaded felt equally hard to make. And every video felt shallow. They lacked substance. Each video was like a bottle of soda that was flat, stale, no fizz in it. Uninspired. Even after 67 videos the Muse never found me. How could she find me? I was never in the same place twice. My approach was chaos. The Muse and her inspired ideas don't like chaos. It's 2026 now as I sit at the desk in my office, clacking away at this keyboard. Ten years have passed and I've come to understand the Muse a little better now. She prefers structure. She demands it. She's like water, her energy is all flowy and dynamic and slippery and will get all over the damn place if you don't have a container to put it in. Back then, I was not deliberate or intentional or consistent with my craft, my project, my challenge, and that was unattractive to the Muse. I didn't have a secure container within which to preserve her brilliance, so why would she waste her time on me? What would I even do with her genius? And so she never blessed my endeavor with the deeper meaning, the substance, that I had longed to create. Any glimpses of the Muse's creative powers slipped through my fingers quicker than I could scoop it. Imagine going to the beach, getting into the ocean, and trying to scoop up water with one hand, but you can't fully seal your fingers on that one hand so the water slips through them no matter how you contort and cramp your hand. That's not a secure container. The Muse tilts her head like, "You're trying to pour my creative juices into that?" Having a secure container is like having one of those orange Home Depot buckets. Wooo, okay now we're talking. Those buckets are big and basically indestructible. The Muse zips on as she always does but at the last second she pauses, mid-flight... Hold up... ....her eye catches the orange bucket. She knows I'm serious now. She knows I came to play. She finds my offering–my consistent and predictable sacrifice of time and space–acceptable. She sees my devotion, my dedication to the craft, my sitting down to write and share every day and pour my soul out through my fingertips and into this keyboard and she approves. She overlays her multidimensional hands with mine and together we flow. I receive her blessing with gratitude, filling the bucket as much as I can today. I don't know if she'll be back tomorrow, but I'll be ready for her with another orange bucket and I vow to continue the work myself even if she isn't able to join me. With a nod from the Muse, Acme setup - conflict - change - A container for creativity to flow. A secure container.