“Did you ask?”

My grandad never asked for directions in his life. He usually got where he was going from, but it was from sheer cussedness and determination. Other members of my family are the same. Not just about directions, everything. They would rather die of thirst in the middle of Tesco than ask a sales assistant ‘where do you keep the fizzy water?’

I ask.

“Where’s this?”

“How do you get there?”

“What does this do?!”

“Um, is that on fire?”

“Should we do something about that?”

“What should we do next?”

I’m sure it gets on people’s nerves almost as much as the opposite habit gets on mine, but honestly sometimes you just need to ask for help. It doesn’t show weakness, it doesn’t make you look daft, and why not? I mean, if you can’t find what you need in the (metaphorical) shop and you just leave, you’ll always wonder if maybe it was there after all.

The reason this is on my mind at the moment is that I’m working on some funding applications and I am pestering everyone about them. I’ve got in touch with people I know who got funding before to see what they thought of the process. I’ve asked for advice from people who’ve worked at the funding organisation. I’ve even got in touch with some old friends to see what the current buzz words are in the funding work.

Professionalistion.

Interstitial.

Multi-disciplinary (that one always goes over well).

There’s information out there that I can access that will make my life easier, so I’m going to tap into into that if I can. If there’s something that I don’t know, then it’s better to learn about rather than sit and let ‘being the person that doesn’t know that’ calcify.

And I can use the internet, before you ask, but that doesn’t always work. Wikipedia can give you facts but, unless you’ve found a very loosely maintained page, it isn’t going to give you the experience. Plus some things are not on the internet, it was a shock to me too!

The same goes if I need to find out something for a book. Google is a great help to get started, but once you have that pinned down then you go and look for more specific information. And if you’re willing to ask people the search will be easier. Or sometimes you need to ask someone directly even before you can google.

As great a resource as google is it can’t read your mind. Sometimes you need to sit down with someone who knows what they are talking about before you even know what search terms to google. You need a certain base familiarity before you can search effectively.

Which reminds me, don’t be an ass to people. Don’t assume they’ll help you, don’t be snippy if they don’t, if someone generally gets paid to do this stuff don’t ask them to do it for free. Also don’t be inappropriate, not everyone is comfortable with talk about sex and stuff. Respect that.

I actually think that the reluctance to ask questions is a sort of imposter syndrome. The reason that people would rather shuffle disconsolately home, or drive slowly through increasingly dark streets in grim search of a venue no one wants to get to anymore, isn’t because they don’t care. It’s because they don’t want to look stupid.

If you ask, then you have to admit you don’t know. People might think you’re daft. What if it’s a stupid question? Maybe you should have known the answer already!

And yet in those scenarios you’re very unlikely to lose an eye. The worst that can happen is that someone is snotty to you. That does, admittedly, suck. However, take it from someone who was once told not to put pen to paper again until I’d read the canon of Russian literature, you’ll survive.

I have lost count of the times I’ve asked where something was and it turned out to be right in front of me. The embarrassment, however, is fleeting and the enjoyment of whatever you found lingers.

So ask! And if it is one fire, you should do something about it!

Find out more about TA Moore, whose next book Take the Edge Off is out on 11 June 2019, at tammy@tamoorewrites.com