I'm 42 and I can tell you from experience that unless someone offered to pay your rent while you were gone, calls to adventure ain't all they're cracked up to be...
But the true adventure begins when you get back, rich with cultural experience and travel! Because that's when you realise you don't have any money left, you got evicted from your flat, you have 1000s of dollars in unpaid bills and you've got nowhere to go.
What a time to be alive!
The trick is to take out a ton of loans and buy a bunch of adventure stuff on credit cards before you leave then just never come back
I called someone to adventure once and offered to pay his rent for the month we would be gone, sounds like a good deal, right? Well he flaked out on me.
What? I had to drive across the country twice for a business trip and I didn't want to go alone and I wanted him to come with me. He decided he didn't want to go apparently.
The harsh reality is that I (and I'm CERTAIN the collective "we") have received dozens of calls to adventure, and we've just rejected them for the relative comforts of the rat race.
Honestly, a call to adventure sounds like a lot of work and I haven't caught up on some of my shows yet...
Coming to terms with the fact that I'll never be a Gundam pilot has been a struggle to be honest.
Have you watched a Gundam show? It's probably for the best that you'll never pilot one.
Yeah only the pilots and politicians have the power to change anything. Everyone else is just along for the ride and have to cross their fingers that they avoid becoming collateral damage
I'm miserable in my tedious no Gundam having life. If I'm going to be miserable either way I'd rather do it flying around in a cool robot.
Don't give up hope! Both Bilbo and Frodo were called to adventure by Gandalf at 50, and Bilbo left the shire for more adventure at 111.
The novel Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu is a neat story about a self-described "generic Asian man" who is stuck in the "background Oriental male" role while aspiring to be the "kung fu guy"
I always liked at the end of Starship Troopers it was Zim who ended up capturing the brain bug after taking a demotion to fight on the front lines.
Yes. I do have that specific stone tablet you need to continue your journey.
But if you want me to give it to you, you're going to have to make a whole lot of grilled cheese sandwiches for me.
Fancy ones.
Shropshire Blue. It's like a strong cheddar with blue cheese veins. I've only seen it at top cheese shops, but it's worth searching out
It's always a fine line between 'let me have an adventure and check all the shops in my area' and 'f&&k it, let me give f&&king Bezos more money."
Fanciest grilled cheese I've ever had: Cheddar, feta, and a skosh of gruyere with a few fresh basil leaves.
sell all your shit, get an older van with good mechanics (easier to fix)
convert it into a portable house
quit your job, go on an adventure...
NB : you require some savings before you do this, otherwise you just become homeless.
Remember kids, time is money, but money is also time.
Source : Took a year long sabbatical and moved continents and started a family. Please help me, the DGI is on my ass.
Disseminated gonococcal infection is on your ass?
savings is good, but most people longing for such a change aren't in a good position to save up... and you can always make money somewhere else you go to (often, not always)
if you can't, just hobo somewhere you can...
Sure, just giving advice to people who want to do this with a kind of safety net. Doing it "your way" is more risky, but doing it as opposed to not doing it can still be possible, if you're a bit more prudent.
DGI is the acronym for the tax institution in the country I'm in.
you can make money while living in a van...
one of the subs i mentioned is "digital nomads", which is entirely employed people... living nomadically while working online... aka remote...
in r/vagabonds there's a lot of more traditional traveler type work... seasonal stuff...
or you could tend bar or something
remember kids, money is a figment, time is counting down and you will die someday...
you won't regret having adventures... but you will regret being comfortable
nope... i know reddit is trash and all... but good info on the subs vandwellers, vagabonds, and digitalnomads...
adventure is always an option...
(and risky and scary...)
there's also adventurous sports, like freediving, camping:hiking... shit like that...
i think skydiving is dumb but a lot of people consider that adventurous...
you could also do protests, volunteer firefighter, become a paramedic...
i have just given you a call to adventure: but will you answer?
Yeah, definitely trolling
I refuse to believe anyone is stupid enough to see this as a realistic option
enjoy sitting in your apartment, doing the exact same thing
every day,
every week,
for the rest of your life...
never changing anything...
take no risks....
a handshake, with carbon monoxide
no alarms and no surprises
p.s. people living lives that are difficult for you to understand are not "stupid"...
you, however, are "ignorant"
you wanted a call to adventure, i gave you one...
read those lyrics again... it's a great song
"I refuse to believe anyone is stupid enough to see this as a realistic option"
yes, you called me stupid... you're stupid if you think i'm trying to tell you every step of the way... like "get a driver license"
you could get a fucking boat, the whole point is choosing your own adventure...
i'm trying to remind you that you are not stuck, you are not too old to have opportunity for adventures... you are comfortable and you are afraid of change.
it quite common, really... but we're not stupid
If anyone else feels bummed out by this, there are a lot of calls to adventure you can answer at any time. 75% of fire departments in the United States are volunteer. If you’re in half decent physical shape, get out there. Disaster relief organizations like the Red Cross are good too. Lots of jobs to do where you can be sent to disaster zones for 1 and 2 week rotations, but also local disaster response, like showing up to house fires to help families find temporary housing.
One of my all time favorite fantasy books is 'Glory Road' by Robert A. Heinlein.
The hero sees a classified ad in the back of the newspaper. "Are You A Coward?"
Safety not guaranteed”.
LPT. Never pass a chance to post something with a video of Aubrey Plaza
Example
Back in the 1900s, when people used to get their news printed out on pieces of paper, people could pay the company a small amount to run a small advertisement, that were all lumped in together in back, called classified ads or "the classifieds".
ARE YOU A COWARD?
This is not for you.
We badly need a brave man.
He must be 23 to 25 years old,
in perfect health, at least six
feet tall, weigh about 190 pounds,
fluent English with some French,
proficient with all weapons,
some knowledge of engineering
and mathematics essential,
willing to travel, no family or
emotional ties, indomitably
courageous and handsome of
face and figure.
Permanent employment,
very high pay, glorious adventure,
great danger. Must apply in person
Which thing?
The ad from the story, or the fact that there are humans who have never held a newspaper?
"Well, Martha, at least the damn whippersnapper didn't ask what a newspaper is..."
I kid. Back in the day, newspapers made most of their money off of advertising. Full page ads for things like supermarkets, furniture stores, cars, and luxury items. Smaller ads for movies, specialty shops, etc. In fact, you'll see some older newspapers whose name was The Advertiser. The classified ads were 'classified' by the type of ad. There'd be five or six full lenght columns with short ads. Help Wanted and Apartments to rent would have the most spots, but there were plenty of ads for Yard Sales, Handymen, Pets for sale or adoption.
If you read the book, the hero explains why he enjoys reading them. It's a great novel; the author takes most of the tropes and punches them in the crotch.
https://www.warwickadvertiser.com/
Just found this site with a quick search, and it helps because it actually has a classified ads section in the back.
Ah I see. It's true that I've never read a full newspaper, but I know these mini ad boxes exist. English is not my native language, perhaps that is why I didn't know the term. I though classified as in secret.
'Classified' as in specific they would run the ads in specific sections. All the 'Help Wanted' ads under one heading, all the 'Rooms For Rent' under another.
Think of them as what people did before Craigslist (or I guess Facebook Marketplace these days).
The last YA novel I read was Lucky Wander Boy. The main character was 40 something. Although his call to adventure was more akin to mental illness... 🤔
You could always be the star of another movie with a 40 year old protagonist. The 40 Year Old Virgin
I was once told by a friend to be positive and that I'm the hero of my own adventure (I am not lonely at that time by the way, I was moving out of my hometown, which is funny enough since I realised after that people seem to think it's weird if you move out of town for any reasons aside from job or college opportunities). Anyway, I was indeed going on adventure by moving out of town but I never thought of myself as hero before or after. I don't like the expression because it sounds like stoking and inflating the ego. I have a friend who seems to have that mindset when we were younger, but when our 20s came, he fell into depression for not attaining his dreams and desires.
I think a lot of us were raised to hope and to be like a superhero making big changes to the world. Personally, I see myself as more like a traveller or soldier; experiencing and absorbing the world without necessarily trying so hard to shape the world to our own liking, and also facing challenges and adversities gracefully. Live your life to the fullest as you wish, but what I'm trying to say is be humble enough you're only human--not a god-- and know when to fight battles.
Edit: added more info
I think a lot of us were raised to hope and to be like a superhero making big changes to the world.
Ya, so much of our media is about "ordinary person realizes they are not just a regular loser, they are special! They have magical powers or were actually a prince or a millionaire this whole time!" especially anything for young people.
You gotta make your own. Pack some stuff, ride your bike and punch some meanies on the way.
There are many calls to adventure, but we often don't heed them because it means discomfort and risk - sometimes to the degree that your long-term survival is jeopardized with few means to mitigate that (valid), other times just because sitting on the couch seems nicer (more often than not, an excuse - but a choice you're certainly allowed to make).
If your ability to survive by the trial's end isn't compromised, I think everyone should choose at least one adventure for themselves, even if it's something that makes you feel a little like Don Quixote. It at least gives you something to talk about.
As someone over 50, that's because you didn't make them good adventures
I've ruined so many pairs of shoes 😂
First off -- haha, I like it.
Second, it reminds me of something I read, but I can't remember the exact quote, and I'd be grateful to anyone who can figure it out. I'm pretty sure it was Vonnegut, and I think it may have been from Breakfast of Champions. The gist was that most stories are misleading because they teach people that life has a plot -- that it has major storylines, minor storylines, and so on. The author (Vonnegut?) then says that really life is just a bunch of moments, each as important or unimportant as the next.
It doesn't quite sound like BoC unless it's from the self-insert scene, but it's definitely in the main themes of Slaughterhouse Five
Remember when they were calling everyone NPCs as if that wasn't shameless main character syndrome?
I don’t want to live in interesting times. I want to be fat and lazy in the era of THC cartridges and 4K TV
Considering when I was a teenager I spent a lot of time reading post-apocalyptic books, that may be a good thing in my case for society as a whole.
Hey, you! Yeah, you! Start a union at your workplace! Join an anarchist org. Run for local council on an environmental and transit platform. Attend a protest. Paint bike lanes!