There are plenty of real life adventure stories that don’t involve amazingly successful workaholics or complicated concepts or once in a lifetime opportunities or superhuman abilities.
There are handful of caving and cave diving books, some real, some fiction that are quite gripping. And most of these involve “average” people doing exploring on weekends and long weekends or typical vacations. (PS, don’t even think of doing either without getting training from people who know how to do this stuff right).
Now, let me think of a few other “recreational” activities (skip to next paragraph when you get bored). Rock climbing, mountain climbing, hiking, deep sea fishing, boating and boat building, paddling/canoeing/kayaking, white water paddling, scuba diving, camping, astronomy and telescope building, rock collecting, fossil collecting, heck collecting of probably a thousand different things, water skiing, snow skiing or snowboarding, surfing, sail boarding, road tripping, hang gliding, glider gliding, flying small planes, building your own plane, gardening, car repair, car customizing, mountain biking, 4 wheeling/offroading, hunting (of many different types, competive shooting or archerry, making models of a dozen different things, woodworking, cooking and baking, homebrewing beer and wine, homebuilt robots, remote control planes and cars, motorcycle and “supped up go cart scale” racing, on foot racing, paddling racing, woodworking, glass blowing, pottery, sailing, kite surfing, fly fishing, volunteer firefighting, volunteer work with local Search and Rescue Units, volunteer with Civil Air Patrol, volunteer with Animal Rescue, helping biologists locate and document plants and animals of interest, home repair or improvement, painting, photography, videography, sky diving, skate boarding (hoverboarding is just around the corner), geneology and or historical research, helping with archeological digs, Meals on Wheels, Goodwill/Salvation Army/Hospital Volunteer work, trained dog competitions, triatholons, model rocketry and probably a good bit more.
Now take any of those real life activities. You can be pretty sure that there are books (and usually a BUNCH of em) about all those things that are designed to appeal to, be understandable to, and impart the wonder/magic/excitement/satisfaction that the activity brings to the beginner reader. There will also be numerous books on adventures big and small, some funny, some scary, some good and exciting as people engage in these activities. And of course plenty of how to books which will appeal the “engineering/hands on/how does it work?” types. Again, keep in mind many of these activities do not take large sums of money, that most of the people that do them are not geniuses or workaholics or rich or superhuman or hypercompetive assholes.
Instead these adventures are often experienced by normal people with 9 to 5 jobs, often a spouse and kids, who have found something other than WOW or other fantasy stuff to fill their weekends. It gets them out of the house, away from the often times IMO dreck of the internet and television and gaming world, get ems some exercise, stimulates the mind and senses in a way the dreck doesn’t, and usually involves socializing with other folks who are interesting, motivated, and often with a significantly different socio/economic/educational/occupational back ground than yourself which leads to mind expanding casual conversations.
And you never know what exciting thing will happen on any given weekend. Last weekend I got to paddle over a 4 foot alligator in 2 foot of crystal clear water. I could have reached out and touched him. Pretty damn neat.
Find something, anything, that sounds like it might be interesting and DO IT. If it doesn’t float your boat try something else.
J/K Oak(I haven’t been to the WoW discussion board for awhile).
