Definitely nothing wrong with maintaining your razor with a pasted strop. You could even start with the 1, 5, and 8k hones (with or without the pasted strop), as adding a 12k without getting great results off the 8k won't help you anyway. But that only works if you are going to learn to hone from the ground up.

I personally think it's easier to learn from the top down, in which case you would start with the 12k, then the 8, then 5, then 1. Add in the paste if/when you feel like trying it out.