Uncertainty Can Cause New Beginnings

Zipping along 375 West (a/k/a “The Parkway”) to check in at Woolly Bear Books and see if my books sold during the 2026 Great Pittsburgh Book Crawl last week, I tap the radio button for NPR and hear this one sentence.

Uncertainty can cause new beginnings.

I’ve no idea what context it was said in because it’s the final statement from the person interviewed, delivered at the top of the hour before NPR switches to a news program.

That sentence rolls around in my head as I park, slip four quarters in the old-fashioned meter, do a ‘hello’ and quick check with Mike, the bookstore owner (my books are still unsold but displayed lovingly on a good front shelf), and head to The Carnegie Coffee Company. There, caffeinated and jamming to a coffee shop rock ’n roll playlist that includes China Grove (Doobie Brothers) and Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen), I open my laptop and begin writing!

Uncertainty - often coupled with a mix of fear, frustration and/or determination - has fueled many new beginnings for me. Life is short. When I’m not willing to face that uncertainty and turn it into fuel, I stagnate. Stagnating means not moving forward which means losing chunks of this oh so short existence.

When Life Gets in the Way vs. When We Let Life Get in the Way

In this, the sixth decade of my life, I feel a bit philosophical. This morning a soft, summer rain made music outside the window. My pink velvet crepe myrtle bush and my yellow roses, in full bloom, soaked in nature’s nurture. Birds were singing. And me? I’d woken uncertain if the joy of my anticipated bookshop and coffee shop visit would actually happen.

For over 24 hours, I’d been navigating our chaotic health care system trying to find the person or department who could move radiology images into a system called “power share”. Medical issues had been getting in the way of life’s pleasures, off and on, for nearly a week. The current dilemma followed a search for a specialist who could see me in a few weeks rather than months. The search forced me out of network. Out of network meant the test result images needed to go into “power share” and be retrieved on the other end. Think of putting a note on a remote powered toy boat and sending it across the pond to someone waiting on the other side. Less efficient but, like power share, still needs an operator.

When dealing with the U.S. healthcare system I always feel like one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. Life, and a kidney stone I’m trying to ditch before it blocks something it shouldn’t, left me uncertain what the day would bring. It looked like I’d be driving to the radiology department, rather than the bookstore, to beg for assistance in order to keep my out of network appointment. A huge part of me wanted to curl up with a book and disappear into a good novel. But that would be me letting life get in the way. Uncertainty and frustration pushed me to make one more call and…voilà…I found the power share person!

I’ve never had writer’s block, only life block.

For decades I worked two jobs, then more career-oriented jobs with long hours. Ideas, characters, and snippets of prose arose in me constantly only to be suppressed in the face of all of life’s many needs - work to be done, bills to be paid, relationships to sustain, medical issues to face and conquer. For years, I took any opportunity to scribble out a poem or prose in a notebook or, later, on a laptop. Fragments that, much like me at those stages in my life, didn’t amount to a whole picture. Snatching those moments to write was like turning the release valve on a pipe and letting the water flow, internal pressure gone, relaxation in place.

I bought books on how to market writing (pre-Internet) and tried pitching and querying and submitting my work. I searched for local writing programs I could fit in around the jobs and life stuff. None of my efforts ever worked. More often, I wrangled with whether I was (1) cursed; or (2) too afraid to sell everything, ditch medical insurance, and walk away to enter graduate school. I’m thrilled for young writers today when I look at the smorgasbord of options available to find ways to write, channels to publish, and writing communities to join. I was riding that surfboard alone for a very long time!

If I sound like some sort of courageous person, put that thought aside. I confess that, in my late 20’s to late-30’s, I quit writing altogether. I gave up. I let life - and the many rejection letters - get in the way. In those years, I would often be depressed, party a little too much, motor through bad relationship decisions, and feel this continuous empty spot inside. I concocted the excuse that I needed to live life before I could write about it. Like most people, I assumed there would always be time to figure things out, time to find my way to the writing dream I’d had since I was in the fourth grade.

The past few days have not, by a long shot, been my first dance with our health care system.

Nobody wants a shopping list of another person’s medical issues. Suffice to say by age 21 I’d had three operations for a congenital defect that left a small, questionable window in which to have children. In my 30’s, all those operations pushed me through menopause and shut down that system. At 39, I was diagnosed with lymphoma.

That last medical diagnosis was the key that kicked me out of a dead-end paralegal job, a dead-end relationship, and back into writing again. Nothing like facing a 50/50 chance with one of those 50%’s being death to turn a girl who was letting life get in the way into a woman who sometimes finds life gets in the way - then rights herself again. Cancer was a big dose of uncertainty that fueled a more positive path and continues to fuel it today. I consider myself on a second chance at life and I try not to waste it.

But it doesn’t mean that the same stumbling blocks don’t continue to rear their ugly heads and prove problematic. It simply means I’ve grown a pair of climbing shoes to hike my way forward.

Imposter syndrome is the Queen of Uncertainty.

I open that release valve every day now and write. I work hard to get organized and keep a balance that allows for creativity. It doesn’t mean uncertainty has retracted its sharp, pointy little fangs and stopped biting me.

Are my books any good?

Will people read them?

Can I stay in remission long enough to finish all the ideas in my head?

Is everything I’m doing too little, too late?

I push back against these thoughts with every book, with every article, with every Substack post. Then I climb over the imposter syndrome and uncertainty and move forward…again and again and again.

It will be three years at the end of August since I retired a year before the traditional age of 65 that most Americans choose; an age that allows a smooth transition from corporate healthcare to Medicare. That last year of work was an ongoing bundle of uncertainty for me.

Could I afford to cover healthcare for a year?

Could I afford to live on a smaller, fixed income?

Would the many aches and pains and issues I felt after years of sitting for over 50 hours a week in front of a desk worsen if I stayed one more year?

Would leaving a hugely successful career to drop into an uncertain dream of writing and publishing books inflame that old imposter syndrome beyond what I could handle?

I let my uncertainty fuel a new beginning. Has it been easy? Nope. If you read my Substack columns you know I’ve juggled the writing with support for a family member in medical crisis. I’ve spent more money than I’ve earned publishing and selling my books. And despite better exercise, the aches and pains are evolving into a new stage of medical uncertainty.

There is always a rainbow.

Corporate life made me an expert at time management and at suppressing my writing ideas when they arose. Writing impulses became notes everywhere—sticky notes on my desk, quick sentences in my phone notepad—that I tackled on weekends and late nights. Anytime I wasn’t too tired to write.

Retirement opened a flood gate of creativity bigger than I could have imagined. I have more ideas for books and articles than I have time to tackle. It’s wonderful and frightening and leaves me uncertain as to whether I can find a balance that keeps me healthy and gets all these books out of my head and into the world in this short, short, short life that we are given. This uncertainty mixes with determination and fuels me every day.

Feel free to share in the comments when uncertainty in your life has led to a new beginning.