I’m looking at this brochure, see? glossy paper, almost too bright. It’s for some tour of the Hebrides, all windswept cliffs and grey-green water. The kind of place I always wanted to go. Raining outside, of course. Always raining here. North. Wet. My laptop's propped up, waiting for some email about a quick bug fix gig. Just enough to cover the rent and maybe a few tins of soup. The usual. And I’m just… staring at this brochure. Thinking about a life not lived. Is that weird? Does everyone feel this pang of counterfactual regret? I mean, deeply, in your bones? Not just a fleeting thought. There was a moment. A particular, very precise moment. I was 22, fresh out of uni, a shiny degree in computer science. This was back when "software engineer" still felt like a new, exciting frontier. I had an offer, a good one, from a big corporation. Steady, benefits, the whole nine yards. A career. What everyone said I should do. But then… there was Anya. She was an anthropologist, absolutely brilliant. Fierce, funny, obsessed with indigenous languages. She was going to Papua New Guinea for field research, for two years, maybe more. Studying a dying dialect, something only a handful of elders still spoke. She asked me to come. Not in a casual way. She *asked*. Like, "Come with me. Be my partner. We can figure it out." She said I could help with data collection, maybe develop some linguistic software. She really meant it. Her eyes were so bright, full of this incredible, terrifying hope. I remember standing in my tiny student flat, the air thick with dust and the smell of instant coffee. My acceptance letter for the corporate job was on the table, crisp and white. Anya was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, tracing patterns on the worn carpet with her finger. "Imagine," she said, "living completely differently. Learning new ways of seeing the world. No cubicles, no endless meetings. Just… life. Raw and real." And I almost said yes. My gut clenched with it. The sheer, overwhelming pull of it. The adventure, the escape from the predictable. The chance to be truly *different*. My analytical mind, even then, was running scenarios: what if the data wasn't clean, what if the living conditions were too harsh, what about malaria, what about career prospects *after* two years in the jungle? My prefrontal cortex, always so dominant, cataloging risk. But then my amygdala, I suppose, took over in a different way. Fear. Not just of the unknown, but of failing her. Of being a burden. Of not being *enough* for that kind of life. And the fear of disappointing my parents. They’d worked so hard, sacrificed everything for my education. To throw it all away for… a jungle? It felt like a betrayal. A selfish, indulgent whim. My internal locus of control, utterly externalized at that point. So I said no. My voice was a little shaky. I remember her face. It didn’t crumble, not exactly. It just… deflated. Like a balloon slowly losing air. A quiet sorrow settled over her features. She nodded, slowly. "I understand," she said. But I don’t think she did. Or maybe she understood *me* too well. She left a week later. I never saw her again. We corresponded for a while, postcards from remote villages, full of fascinating details. Then the letters tapered off. Life, I suppose, intervenes. Or perhaps, my silence was intervention enough. Decades. DECADES since then. I've written so much code. Bug fixes, new features, legacy systems. Always for someone else's vision. My own dreams, they just… atrophied. And now, the freelance grind. Chasing payments, negotiating rates that barely cover expenses. No pension, no sick days. Just the hustle. The rain outside, a constant, low hum. And this brochure. Hebrides. Not Papua New Guinea, not anymore. But still… wildness. A different path. I pick up my phone, the screen glows blue. Another email about a small contract. A week's work, maybe. Enough for a few more tins of soup. I look at the brochure again. The old man on the cover, with his weathered face and knowing eyes. He looks like he’s lived a hundred lives. And I’ve lived just one. The safe one. The one I was supposed to. Is that success? To have done exactly what was expected? My self-efficacy, a variable that peaked early and then slowly declined. I wonder if she ever thinks of me. That software engineer, in his rainy northern city, staring at a travel brochure. Imagine. Imagine.