Back in 2019, I wrote about climbing up Scolty Hill in Scotland, and complained about all those fit people at the top blithely taking photos while I gasped for air.

Well, things change. Now it’s one of my regular dog walking spots.

Change is a funny thing. Sometimes, you sit behind the wheel of a car like you have thousands of times before, but this time you break out into a sweat, and you can’t breathe because driving anxiety has taken hold out of nowhere. And sometimes you find yourself doing something you never thought possible.

Sometimes change happens for reasons beyond your control. Hormones, politics, pandemics. And sometimes change happens because you decide.

It’s probably safer to go through life without changing. Maybe even smarter. But there is something about passing the midpoint of your life that makes you go “f—k it”

I can walk up Scolty Hill now. I can drive again. And I can become the person who takes the risk and decides to change.