Climb for Hospice

So strange. Usually when my vacation time draws closer, I get more excited. This is not at all the case with my African adventure. I’m feeling a lot of pressure right now, and I know it’s pressure that I’ve put on myself.

“What if I don’t summit?”, I ask.

Inevitably, the person I ask always says, “you’ll summit!”

But what if I don’t?

Really, what if I don’t?  I’ll feel like such a failure.

…God, you know, I keep setting these HUGE goals for myself, and when I achieve them, I write it off as luck, or some other mysterious thing that got me there instead of my own hard work and determination. And then, to ‘atone’ for my success, I set an even loftier goal, something near the impossible.

It’s almost like I set myself up to fail.

Funny, I’m fine with believing that I’ve failed, but if I succeed at something, I can’t take it in. I’m not willing to give myself any credit if I achieve what I set out to do, but if I don’t succeed, I never stop blaming myself. I don’t ever want to feel as though I’m patting myself on the back, or getting a swelled head. But I don’t mind allowing myself to feel defeated and lost. It’s all twisted and backwards.

Maybe that’s why I’m so nervous.  I think maybe it’s because my brain is trying to gear itself up for the onslaught of negativity that is going to come my way, whether I fail, or whether I succeed. My poor brain is working overtime, roiling and sluicing at terrible speeds.

I wish there were Tums for the brain.

Six more sleeps.