I was wondering if anyone had any pointers or advice to make this project work. Essentially I would like to have the LED fade (meaning like fade on and off at a calm rate) at one rate when there is nothing close to the proximity sensor, and then to speed up the fade amount when there is something close to the sensor.

#include <NewPing.h>   //include the library

int led = 9;           // the PWM pin the LED is attached to
int brightness = 0;    // how bright the LED is
int fadeAmount;    // how many points to fade the LED by

int triggerPin = 12;   //pin conneccted to the Trig pin on the sensor
int echoPin = 11;       //pin connected to the Echo pin on the sensor
int maxDistance = 200;  //set the max distance for the sensor to read (helps with errors)
int distanceVal;        //variable to hold the distance val

int sampleRate = 200;   //how fast to sample the value
long lastReading;       //used for the timer

NewPing proximity1(triggerPin, echoPin, maxDistance);   //sets up the sensor object

void setup() 
{
  Serial.begin(9600);  //start the serial port
  pinMode(led, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {

    if(millis()-lastReading>=sampleRate) //this very simple statement is the timer,
  { 
  distanceVal = proximity1.ping_cm();  //get the distance value in centimeters

  
  lastReading = millis();

  Serial.print("Distance Reading CM : ");  //print the value to the Serial monitor
  Serial.println(distanceVal);


if(distanceVal<20){
  
fadeAmount = 5;
}
else{
  fadeAmount = 2;
}

  // set the brightness of pin 9:
  analogWrite(led, brightness);

  // change the brightness for next time through the loop:
  brightness = brightness + fadeAmount;

  // reverse the direction of the fading at the ends of the fade:
  if (brightness <= 0 || brightness >= 255) {
    fadeAmount = -fadeAmount;
  }
  // wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect
  delay(30);
  }
}

https://github.com/sanaalla/Fade-LED-with-Proximity-sensor

Above is my code, which is not working. I am fairly new to Arduino and so would greatly appreciate some more seasoned wisdom!