51 and done?

Over the last couple of years, a lot has changed.

I no longer drive. Instead, I am driven around in a van.

Logically, I understand how this came about. I actively made many of the choices that brought me to this situation, and I know why those choices were necessary. Emotionally, though, I haven’t really accepted it. I’m not sure I ever fully will.

Driving meant much more to me than simply getting from one place to another. It represented freedom, independence and the ability to decide where I wanted to go and when I wanted to go there. I wrote about what driving meant to me in Freedom to Drive.

For a long time, what I did for a job was also core to who I was. Success at work felt like success in life and, generally, even during the hard times, that was enough.

Years ago, that mindset had to change.

I’m not sure how healthy it ever really was, but sometimes I miss the simplicity of it.

I still love technology, but the truth is that technology only matters when it helps people get things done. I love building systems, working with people and seeing what can be achieved. I’ve also spent a lot of time taking apart systems that I helped build. For some, it was simply their time. Others I dismantled with a genuinely heavy heart.

If you want an idea of how much work once meant to me, The First Job probably says it better than I can today.

I think a lot of people see me as a confident, perhaps even overconfident, person.

The truth underneath that is more complicated.

I want to be liked. I want to be accepted. I want to be truly seen.

Honestly, that’s probably still a problem for me. But as I’ve got older, it has mattered less.

For a long time, I thought people could be understood and anticipated. If I could just understand someone well enough, perhaps I could understand why they behaved as they did, what they wanted, or what they might do next.

I don’t believe that anymore.

The only person you can truly spend a lifetime trying to understand is yourself.

I’ve written before about some of the challenges I’ve had understanding people, expectations and myself in Driving, Interviews and Polly.

I have also written a lot about physical challenges and pain. The story that still represents much of that for me is Hard Hills.

I’m not pushing up hard hills anymore. In fact, I’m transitioning to using an electric wheelchair. That’s been interesting in itself, but it also brings a different set of challenges.

There are ordinary things that most people understandably don’t spend much time thinking about.

Being able to sit up straight. Using a bathroom easily. Having the option to go where you want, when you want.

If you’re fortunate enough to have those things, appreciate them. They may sound small, but losing any one of them can fundamentally change how you experience the world.

Today, many of the challenges I face are different from the ones I faced when I wrote Hard Hills, but they are challenges all the same.

Years ago, I wrote The Mirror’s Truth about looking at myself and trying to reconcile the person I saw with the person I wanted to be.

I’m not sure I’m still looking in quite the same mirror. But it will always matter how I see myself.

And perhaps that is what all of this comes back to.

Driving changed. Work changed. My understanding of people changed. My body has changed, and the ways I move through the world are changing with it.

So, at 51, what’s left?

I’m still working that out.

Some days that feels like a good thing. Other days, if I’m honest, I’m truly terrified.

51 or not, I am still here.

Maybe 51 is simply the point where I’m having to work out who I am without relying quite so heavily on all the things that used to answer that question for me.