I have a friend who has a case of the yips. What are yips, you ask? Despite what you may be thinking, yips are not some newly discovered sexually transmitted disease. According to the Monday-night comedy, How I Met Your Mother, you might have a case of the yips if you tend to overanalyze something to the extent that it makes it impossible for you to act. 

Kristi, a lovely person I consider to be a friend even more than she probably knows, revealed to me that she’s feeling a bit overwhelmed with starting freelance work. The two of us are in the same boat, essentially, in regards to the contract work we provide to the same dot com while mothering curious toddlers underfoot. She also completes the occasional job for her past employer while I answer like a dutiful servant to Master and Mistress Elementary School Kid between the hours of 2:30 and 8:00 PM.

Kristi then went on to relay that the last time she resumed knitting, she read three or four books just to refresh her memory! I understand how she is feeling overwhelmed with freelance writing; she’s letting the yips get to her, and I might, too, if I were to stop and think about everything that is involved with starting a small business and establishing a platform and niche. The administrative work alone, aka, filing quarterly taxes, is enough to make my palms sweat. Start talking about business licenses and establishing yourself as an LLC, and you might find me prone with a migraine. Logos and business cards? Pshaw! That’s the fun stuff. So when did my hobby become a business? Oh yeah, the moment I declared that writing is the career that will define my professional existence.

I try not to think about all of this any more than I have to. All I want to do is write.

When I got to the part of Kristi’s email in which she stated, “I really value your opinion,” I had to laugh. I mean, I really laughed out loud, which is not something I often do when not in the presence of others. I don’t know why; I just don’t. Anyway, after I got over the initial shock of my opinions being worth something, I shared this little nugget of information with Kristi:

Once upon a time when I was, oh, 19 years old, I decided I hated my life as a Southern Belle and packed the contents of my room into the trunk of a beat-up ’89 Toyota Tercel and then drove halfway across the country to greener pastures. To be honest, there are very few green pastures in my birthplace of Wichita, Kansas, so I settled for wind-swept prairie plains, instead, where I soon found a full-time job and enrolled in school.

On August 6, 1998, my whole world changed when I met my husband-to-be in an online chatroom. I was on the brink of 21. He was nearing 33. If you were to look back at transcripts from our initial phone conversations and emails, you might be shocked to learn how little thought we gave our romance and just how quickly things progressed. My feeling of him being the one is so cliché, I know, but true.

On February 5, 1999, we were married (that’s nearly 6 months after our first conversation). The next day we purchased a house, and less than six months later, Hannah made her debut. My husband picked out our first house with little input from me, as I was suffering from Hyperemesis at the time. Even the decision to have a baby went something like, You wanna have a baby? Sure! You wanna have a baby? Sure! When we adopted our first cat from the SPCA, we joked that we were putting more thought into what pet we should choose than the sum of our decision to get married, buy a house, and have a baby!

Fortunately, things worked out for us. Nearly nine years of marriage, two houses, and three kids later . . . we’re one happy family. When something feels right in my heart and in my gut, I go for it with passion and gusto.

When my husband accused me a few weeks ago of being wishy-washy, his words stung because there was truth to them. Yes, I had wanted to be an elementary school teacher. Yes, I had studied to be a nurse. And I would have been a fine teacher or nurse had circumstances not changed the course of my life. I had reservations about teaching and healing, though, reservations I don’t feel when I think about being a writer. Perhaps it’s because writing is what I’ve wanted to do all along; it’s the one thing I can feel in my soul, aside from motherhood.

So I can’t succumb to the yips. I have to ride the wave and see where it takes me. I have to trust my instincts and gut feelings to lead me down the right path.

I have to do and not think about the hows and what ifs too much.

Much of becoming a writer is on-the-job training, anyway. I believe there are very few writers who are great from the get-go. Writing is a skill that takes time to cultivate; it’s something that must grow alongside the writer . . .