I know this sounds like it's going to be another writing post, and in a way, it is, but it's also going to be a personal post.
I want you to do something for me. When you're done reading this paragraph, close your eyes and picture an adventure. That's all the prompt you get. I'm not going to say "an epic journey" because then you'll picture hobbits. I won't say "a wild ride" because then your brain thinks cars are involved. Just picture an adventure...now.
What did you get? Skydiving? Life on the high seas? I would have gotten those, too, if I hadn't been thinking a lot about this lately. So now, I want to tell you what an adventure is for me.
I'm disabled. My current diagnosis is fibromyalgia with hypermobility and a bunch of other associated junk. Some days, I'm okay. Some days I can only get out of bed long enough to shower (sitting down) and, if I'm unlucky, be ill. Some days, not even that. While I only recently got my diagnosis, I've been sick for a long time. I'm struggling to get back up to 120 lbs., which is not ideal for a 5' 8" adult human female. The bottom line is, I'm not going skydiving any time soon.
Books, both reading them and writing them, have been helpful. Netflix is pretty great, too. Still, sometimes, I need an adventure of my own.
So the other day, I ate chicken tikka masala.
Chicken tikka masala is so far off of my medically recommended foods list that the distance between them can be seen from space. Not only does my body dislike acidic food, but I'm full-on allergic to capsaicin (the chemical that makes most spicy food spicy). But sometimes we love things that are bad for us, and every once in a while, my body rebels against all the oatmeal and potatoes and veggie sticks. So I took two benedryl and ate the damn chicken tikka masala. It was delicious. More than that, it was like my mouth got to go to a warehouse rave. Even the rice and the naan seemed like the most beautiful foods in the world. For a little while, despite my dragging struggle with my lemon of a body, everything was amazing.
That was an adventure.
But what really happened?
I ate some food.
If you want to think of this as a writing advice post, then the above is something to consider next time you're building a story for your characters to live in. Not all of them can go skydiving. But not all of them need to.