Start in the Backseat

By That I Mean, Take The Wheel, Already!

Tomorrow is my birthday, and today it occurs to me that I could have started more during this past year – you know, the year that I will soon be referring to as “when I was young.’

So, you know me. I’m about to haul off and list things I’m going to start. Only this time, I’m going to start them right before your very eyes.

I gotta say, this would be so much easier if I were in my house, close to my art studio, fast wifi, and fabric hoarding closet, but I am not. I am in the backseat of a vehicle with my husband and grown children on a seven-hour Thanksgiving drive through Missouri.

I will be inspired exclusively by the backs of heads, Jesus billboards, and the just-harvested cotton bolls I made my husband stop the car for 10 miles back.

Here, in the second seat of this rented Dodge Durango, I’m starting, in real time…

1. A hamster pillow.

   Supplies acquired: 1 cotton boll.

2. This article.

   (I’m on fire, right?!)

3. A follow-up article.

   First sentence: “In my last article, which I wrote when I was only 65, I started some stuff. Here’s how it’s going.”

4. A letter to the high school best friend who slipped away. Let’s  see if I can find her through the power of the Interwebs.

   “Dear Nancy Steuber, you made Freshman year at Southwest High School tolerable for me. Where are you? I know things got weird as we peeled apart into different scary friend groups, and I started waiting tables at Denny’s. That is totally grounds for abandonment at age 16. I forgive us both. Still, I have fond memories of you and how you rocked the first-generation wide-leg light blue jeans in 1974, and I’d love to know what you’ve been up to the past 45-ish years.”

5. A Spanish language competency. I have started this four times in the past 30 years. But this time is a real stART, I am subscribing to and downloading Babble and penciling a plan to go to San Miguel, Mexico, for an immersion course, sometime in 2025. (Nunca es demasiado tarde! = It’s never too late!)

6. My biggest painting ever. I am sketching it before our next refueling stop on the little notebook I carry in my purse.

   

   *To be the best stARTist you can be, always carry a writing utensil and paper.

7. A Missouri road sign photo collection. Start time: 9:47 a.m., Sikeston, Missouri

   

8. A poem about backseat driving

   Backseat Blues

   by Becky Blades

   I’m spectacular at finding parking spots.

   Evidently, this doesn’t matter when I’m in the backseat.

   I know the speed limit, and how much you can push over it on every road in

   Missouri.

   It doesn’t matter here in the backseat.

   The passing lane is where the action is, but the guy driving this car does not know this, apparently.

   He resents my reminders from the backseat.

   I can read the mind of the driver in the car in front of us. He’s cursing us for following so closely. What if he has a gun? That truck was probably sold with a gun included. He 100% has a gun.

   I can’s save our lives because I am in the backseat.

   Uh oh. Traffic is at a standstill here on 55 North, just before Exit 196.

   four lanes

   four people in the car,

   four opinions about which lane we should be in…updated every 45 seconds.

   I know the best route to where we’re going, better than Google maps. Still, I’d have looked at Google maps while driving during a holiday rush, and I would not have taken a detour before we hit this hour-long pile up.

   Putting me in the back seat is keeping six people from Stake n’ Shake.

   I hope they’re happy.

   I just read this poem aloud to the guy with the steering wheel, and he has suggestions. He should have thought of that before he decided to sit in the front seat.

   

9. An article about writing poetry

   First sentence. “Write more poetry! Poetry doesn’t have to rhyme or take hours. Great poems can come to you in a flash while in the backseat of a car stalled for 45 minutes.”

10. A paper making workshop. Playing with this handful of cotton reminds me how much I love to make handmade paper and the fact that I promised my neighbors a creativity workshop. I just picked a date and texted them. Did you know all you need to make paper is old paper and a blender? You can also toss in fiber and scraps of trash. I’ll write a poem on a piece of paper I make in the workshop and include in my article about poetry. Sit tight.

    

    They just brought in the cotton crop in SE Missouri, so you can stop the car and grab some bolls the machines missed from the ends of the rows.

11. A mother-daughter project. One of the people in this car with me is my daughter, Tess, who lives in LA. There’s no time like a 7-hour road trip to convince her to collaborate on a creative project. I’ll put a pin in this for now and see what we come up with when I accidentally wake her up from her nap.

    Update: The only project Tess wants to collaborate on is building an order for our Steak n’ Shake stop. I swung for the bleachers, y’all.

12. A workbook.  I’ve been asked if I’m ever writing another book. I’ve also been asked if there will ever be a workbook to go with Start More Than You Can Finish. Yesterday, I would have said “no” to both questions. But this little road trip has fired up my starting muscles, so you know what? YES. Yes, I’m writing another book, which will be a workbook, which counts as a book, even though it’s really making other people do most of the writing. Here goes!

    Working title: Now We’re  Gonna Start Shit. (I’m stealing this from a social media post I made after the 2024 election. I sent it to my creative girlfriends who were mad and mopey about the election results. BTW, stealing from your own previous creations to start new stuff is 100% allowed.)

    Workbook Page 1; Introduction:

    I don’t think it’s possible to start something while feeling hopeless. So which comes first, the hope or the start? Don’t get your undies in a twist about it. If you have a moment that needs hope in it, I suggest you put a start in it.

    

Exercise 1.

Start a page. This can be the first page of the book you hope to write someday, the final page of the chapter you want to be done with, or the illustrated page of your new journal. First, decide which one it is.

Okay…last start

13. A windshield tour. We’re exiting I-70 for a quick tour of Columbia, Missouri, so I can bore my sons-in-love with folklore about my alma mater, the University of Missouri School of Journalism. It’s almost cruel. They have to act interested when I tell them how we did college without cell phones…when I brag about my A in Econ51 in Middlebush Hall, and detail what a HUUUUUGE deal it was to snag the apartment next to the Heidelberg. M-I-Z, y’all.

Thank you for riding along as I made the 66th year of my life count just a little bit more. Maybe the world could have lived without that poem, but I know at least one hamster is going to sleep better at night because I chose to act on my ideas.

Your turn!

If you’re stuck somewhere where no one is letting you drive, grab the wheel! What’s your idea? What’s your reason? What’s your sliver of time?

Just pick a seat.