Today I became a welder.

There was a woman named Hendriëtta who lived on a small homestead and decided to take on welding to build a new gate for her horse stable. She had never welded before, but she was determined to do it herself. Armed with YouTube tutorials and a welder she bought with little money secretly saved, she dove right in.

The project started off well—she managed to cut the metal pieces to the right size, and things seemed to be going smoothly. But then she got a little too confident and thought, “How hard can it be to add a little decoration?” Inspired, she tried to weld a fancy design onto the gate, imagining swirls and flowers like she’d seen in an online photo.

But what she ended up with looked less like art and more like a mess of melted metal blobs. Her husband, who had been watching from a distance, came over and tried to stifle a laugh. “Are those supposed to be daisies?” he asked.

“Of course not!” Hendriëtta said defensively. “They’re… abstract.”

To make matters worse, she accidentally welded the gate shut before she could even attach it to the stable. The horses stood nearby, watching with what she could only assume was a mix of amusement and pity.

Determined not to give up, she spent the next few hours with a hammer and chisel, trying to free the gate. By the time she was done, the once-sturdy frame was bent in odd places, and the “decorations” looked even more bizarre.

But the real kicker? When she finally attached the gate, she realized she’d measured it wrong. It was too small. The horses just walked right around it.

“Well,” Hendriëtta said, wiping the sweat from her forehead, “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey, right?” And from then on, her horses had the most unique, if slightly ineffective, gate on the block  and Hendriëtta carried on becoming a welder …. In time.