"You know that feeling when you think

"I've done it. I've found my talent, my home. I'm free."

But then you look back at your accomplishments and think

"What have I done? Nothing. What have I accomplished? Nothing that will be remembered, not while I breathe or cease to be."

I've no plans to be remembered and sometimes hope to be forgotten. My only goal is to prove to myself that I can do this. That I'll remember what I went through and what I've done to get here. This is a philosophy to not only keep on this journey but to keep through life."

The pen scribbles harshly at the paper, however it's noise is a whisper compared to the howling winds that pull and tug at the canvas of the small tent around me. We are not yet halfway up the trail and already the mountain repels us. We stay at a base camp, relatively safe compared to what's above us. I close my journal filled with my bleak meditations and examine these ponderings and their origin before I continue to write and embarrass myself further.

I suppose nothing I did that was considered "normal" was ever really appreciated and, try as I might, I felt that if I could do something then it couldn't possibly be extraordinary. So I'm here now, on a hill I literally may die on, to prove that I am capable of the incredible. I didn't realize, until I came to terms with the possibility of death, that I am not trying to prove it to anyone but myself.

This is a harsh and unforgiving environment. One wrong step could cause an avalanche or I could be lost. Each step took me over the bodies of people that had tried before and failed. I was terrified of failure but at least if I failed I would be to busy being dead to notice. Maybe that was why I wrote my darkest thoughts in this little travel journal. If I died no one would ever see it and while that made me sad, it was also a blessing, for if I lived I don't think I could bear the thought of them seeing my head and heart laid out for scrutiny.

With this musing as desolate as the landscape outside of this canvas home, I reopened the little green backed book and continued to write. No one of consequence would ever see it anyway. Perhaps I should have pursued that psychology degree.