I wanted a different title for this blog.
I wanted “Do It Stupid” in honor of a post a fellow writer shared a while back.
But after typing Do It Stupid in the header, I promptly erased it. Typed it again. Erased it. Who knows how many times I’ll bounce the title around before this piece goes live.
I feared it would come off as “Do It, Stupid.” Even though there’d be no comma, I didn’t want my readers to think I was calling them stupid. Or yelling at them to do something.
I also didn’t want my readers to think I was talking to my office staff that way. Commanding Little Miss Muse, Amara, or Stella to “Do it, Stupid” would not go well for me, and I wouldn’t talk to them in such a manner anyway.
And Malachi? He couldn’t even with such a harsh statement. He’d wrap himself in his coping curtain sheer. He hides in it when Amara tells him his ears are too dirty or when he falls out of the cat tree and doesn’t land on his feet. If I insulted him in such a manner, that poor cat would never come out.
Now, I may, on occasion, tell myself something similar. Like, “What are you doing, Beth?” with the tone of “Don’t be stupid.”
Usually this happens in the kitchen.
It happened while I was standing at the counter this evening attempting to throw together a straightforward supper that wouldn’t throw me or the Hubs into the ER.
The directions called for ¼ cup of butter or half a stick.
I don’t have sticks of butter. So that meant I’d need to measure.
But I was lazy (read this as “get me out of the kitchen as soon as humanly possible”) and decided to give it a good guess.
Or a stupid one.
I stood there for a moment before deciding to do it stupid.
Eyeball it.
I scooped out a glob of butter. That looks like about what would be in half a stick. But it’s been a while since I’ve laid eyes on a whole stick of butter, so this is very stupid, but I’m saving the washing of yet another dish—two dishes because you gotta dip the butter out of the tub with something and then stick the butter into the measuring cup. And my measuring cups are tossed to and fro in the back of a cabinet. Probably dusty, even.
“What are you doing, Beth?”
Here it comes… the spinning. What if this stupid stuffing-from-a-box is super picky about the butter, and there’s a reason they give a precise measurement (aren’t all measurements given for a reason?)
But I think it’ll be okay. I mean, it’s not a cake. Or a souffle…
“What are you doing, Beth?” Just call the good folks down at the Mexican restaurant and be done with it.
I plopped the butter into the pan and then decided to do the next part smart. I dug out a cup to measure the water.
I figured doing one thing really well (I can measure 1 ½ cups of slightly dusty water) and then doing another thing stupid might mean that the stuffing turns out adequate.
No complaints from the Hubs. No ER bills. I think we’re good.
Back to working on the blog, and the title still irked me.
So I swapped it. Be a Beginner.
(I do believe I will forever and always feel like a terrified novice in the kitchen. No amount of practice, prayer, or patience will change this. I suppose a third title option could be Do It Scared.)
The winning title was inspired by an auction the Hubs and I attended a couple months ago.
I was after a specific set of chess boards, cool collector editions to flip on eBay. I also find this particular crowd fascinating, and we’d not attended a live auction in many moons.
Somehow, the Hubs ended up with random coins, hundreds of baseball cards neither of us knew he needed, and a shop vac that we weren’t sure would work. (Clearly, someone got it to work once upon a time because their dirt is now in the back of our SUV.)
Before the chess sets came on the block, there were many, many pieces of uranium glass. Some folks call it Vaseline glass. It’s yellow-green under normal light but casts an eerie glow under a black light. The scarcity and unusual properties draw collectors, and the folks in the crowd were going nuts over some of the nicer pieces.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (yeah, you read that right) declared it’s probably not a great idea to eat off of it, lest you should consume microscopic amounts of radioactive material. I’m not an expert, so this statement serves as your public service announcement to put your uranium glass in a curio cabinet under a black light, not your Thanksgiving turkey. It also serves as the “Don’t sue me if you start glowing” warning.
Once the most sought-after pieces, like lamps and ornate serving dishes (again, folks, don’t put the Grateful Day Bird on it), were gone, the crowd lost interest and the auctioneer had to beg and plead for bids.
“Be a beginner, folks. Start somewhere.”
In other words, the novices in the crowd could jumpstart a collection with inexpensive pieces and start the work of learning.
Be a beginner.
Not a bad sales tactic. Not shabby advice, either.
I’ve taken that advice in the last couple of weeks. Be A Beginner. Do It Stupid. However you want to state it.
Sometimes I declare, “What are you doing, Beth?”
Trudi, the concrete goose in charge of marketing, secures her new cape and declares it’s time to do that thing that makes most introverts break into chills and a cold sweat.
Like they’ve been snacking on coping Oreos from a uranium dish: Marketing.
It’s time to bust out the perfectly pointy pencils and the notebooks we never wanted to write in because they were all crisp and bright. It’s time to queue up the training videos and take notes.
It’s time to lean into a new learning curve. It’s part of the dream job, after all. We can write all day long but the right readers won’t find it if we don’t shine a light on it.
Then Little Miss Muse chimes in and says it’s time.
Time to write for real now. The first few years, we were just warming up. Practicing. Over a hundred short stories. A few novels. The blog.
All practice.
All foundation building for craft and practice hitting that submit button without having a stroke.
It’s time to buckle down.
We’ll do things we’d never have dared do before. And, at first, we’ll do it stupid.
I’ve been throwing spaghetti on the walls and seeing what sticks. (Sometimes I get actual spaghetti on my actual walls when I have to toss a culinary attempt into the trash when I didn’t bother measuring something, and it gets a little splashy, but this ain’t that…)
I’m sure I’ll declare out loud more than once, “What are you doing, Beth?”
I’m doing it all stupid. Or scared (videos, really? Heaven help my uber-introverted self).
Taking a chance.
Surfing waves of learning. Eating board. Losing teeth.
Getting up. Going again.
Scattering cats, freaking out muses, and giving artificial office birds reasons to molt.
So, if you see something weird or wonky coming from B. A. Paul in the next few months, you’ll know.
With her purple-winged-imp-of-a-muse, a concrete lawn ornament, a few cats, a pile of jiggle dragons, and some words in just the right order…
Beth’s being a beginner.
She’s doing it stupid.
She’s doing it scared.
But you can bet your uranium glass she’ll get it done.
