Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where your blogger sits in the stew of an existential crisis. And yes, I am a big enough dork that I actually googled "existential crisis" just to make sure it meant what I thought it did. It did. The big red "you are here" arrow on my life map did not have to move at all from the junction of "Why?" and "Who?" and "How?", which is about the perfect place for a real, true...you guessed it.

It all started innocently enough, with a mouse click and a phone call. The mouse click was on a site I have visited many times, the site of Colorado Mountain College. I have been turning over in my mind the possibility of going to school for quite some time. I have narrowed my areas of interest to...well, not very narrow. I would like to work with special needs kids, and council special needs adults. I would like to work in a field that somehow magically combines ecology, earth-stewardship, sustainable agriculture, forestry, and wilderness studies. And I would like to be a chef.

Which leads to a lot of rumination about how well qualified I already am in each of those fields. I already know I am psychotic and over-analytical, but also easily empathize and enjoy listening to people's problems, although mostly because the more I hear about their problems, the better I feel about my own. That might not be the best hybrid for a successful therapist. Mote in your eye, beam in mine, and so forth. I would enjoy (for the most part) being a special-needs teacher, but I do not want to have to find myself in a classroom full of perfectly normal kids because that is the degree I have to fall back on. And the other thing, the earth and water specialist thing is, lets face it, not something that would fit well in my life. Not something I could do from right here, right now. It would require nights away from home and lots of traveling and moving around. But the one thing that seems like a real possibility if I decided I wanted to do it and worked really hard to prove myself and actually, miraculously, was accepted into the program, is a culinary arts degree. Keystone has an incredible culinary arts program. One graduates in three years with an already stacked resume, because of six-month rotating apprenticeships in Keystone's six four-star restaurants. So it is on the career front that I am dangling right now, knowing that my 27th birthday is looming, knowing that I sure as heck won't be getting any degree if I wait until after I have kids (okay, IF.) Feeling the stress of neither B or me being educated, should we need to job hunt again. And becoming aware that our time at this job should not, for the sake of our sanity, be indefinite.

Making the sacrifice of three years to become a chef would open up a lot of opportunities as far as where we could move and our quality of life once we got there. So now we just have to decide- is it worth it to us? Can we support me being a full time student for three years? Can our company live without me? Can B live with me being owned by Keystone, whipping up delicacies in tiny, esthetically arranged, overpriced portions, my life being exclusively about reduction sauces and garnishes and stainless steel commercial kitchens?

We do not know. I do not know. If only I had known several years ago, and I was all graduated now and had resume in hand. Who are we? what are we here for? where do we belong? how do we get there?

The other half of my personal crisis concernes the face I show the world. I had a rather uncomfortable heart-to-heart the other day with a friend who, upon my probing, admitted that I am possibly seen as a pedestal-dweller by many who do not know me well. I ran to B, expecting him to argue this and tell me what a warm and loving person I am in the first impressions I create, and he laughed a bit, and agreed that that is exactly how he saw me the first time he met me- as aloof and cold and having a bit of an elevated opinion of myself. Well. I am at a loss. I had no idea. And now I must go about finding the root cause of this impression I seem to give people.

Those who know me well know that I am not confident, I am far too easily hurt, and yes, I do throw up the shields and circle the wagons at the slightest sign of threat. If I get too overwhelmed, I cannot think of anything witty to say, so I shut up. I try hard- way, way too hard to make everyone love me. But if I percieve that they do not like me, there is no way I am going to keep putting my tender parts out there to get stepped on. I have nothing more to say to them, thank you. I will just stop breathing the air that belongs to them, lest I give them even one more reason to dislike me. So yes, I am aware that my defense mechanisms are well polished and idling, ready to go at a moment's notice. I have these knee-jerk responses to any hint that someone might not adore me, and they tend to alienate. So it stands to reason that I sit up on my pedestal because the pedestal is very safe. Nobody can get hurt up there. I desperately want to be sought out, because if I do the seeking, I could very easily get my tender parts crushed. And when someone does seek me out, I can think of a hundred reasons why, and few of them are without agenda, and if I suspect agenda, I go ahead and pull in the tender parts, just in case.

There are people in my life that have become so constant, and so consistant, and have proven to have enough in common with me that I have become fiercely loyal to them and do not think twice about breathing their air. These people know me as the yes-woman, the crazy one, the best friend. I am lucky to have found people who wait around past the first impression, or put me enough at ease that I am able to be myself from the start.

You, faithful few, are the validation I seek. I go places, and I hear "I read in your blog...", and I realize that my faithful few click on a link not because I will ever know they did it, not because they are just trying to make me feel good, not because they may have to fake interest in my affairs some day, or are looking for conversation starters should we cross paths some day and fall into awkward silence, but because they may actually like me and be interested in what I have to say. That actually blows my mind a little bit.

And yes, I already know what it takes to stop being seen as the one who thinks she is too cool for everyone else. I have to start liking myself. It is a tall order. It's not an easy task. It is why I set unrealistic goals for myself. Why I am so competitive. Why I spend so much time and effort trying to set, then break, personal records. After all, when one is one's own worst enemy, one has no time to be one's best friend.

Sorry. Not trying to bring you down. I know that this is not what you signed up for when you started keeping track of our altitude problems. But if I go ahead and put my psychoses out there, where there is no calling them back, it forces me to at least pretend to be a better person. And with enough pretending, eventually one can't help but become the character they play. And I want to be a genuinely warm, loving character. I know the first step. I have to start liking me before I can accept that anyone might like me.

And finally, where do we go from here? Once we have ourselves all transformed and bettered, what do we do with ourselves? We can only hope that we make the right moves on this not-exactly-mapped-out journey.