Adventure Awaits

Fantasy has always been my chosen genre.

Why? I think because it always starts with, or follows, an adventure of some sort. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always enjoyed adventuring. I’ll explore ruins, caves, and forests; up steep hills, and down long embankments. The only limitations to what I will and won’t do, of course, is my level of perception of the danger involved. Fortunately, out of the several bodily injuries I’ve obtained, none of them have been life threatening, so my danger meter must be pretty accurate.

But the kind of adventure I crave isn’t the kind I can ever have in person. Our planet has gotten smaller and smaller, even since I was born. The cities are close together, and growing closer. The towns have high speed internet (not that I mind, mind you). And there’s mobile phone service in the deepest corners of national parks. You can’t take a camping trip nowadays, and not see someone along the way. C’est la vie.

To be fair, a wizard isn’t going to show up at my door and have me wish him a good morning. Nor will I inherit a magic heirloom. Nor will the Empire kill my family, forcing me into a the foray of a massive civil war. The list goes on and on… Thankfully, I can scratch that itch in a few different ways. I can write, which fleshes out my own love and desire for adventure. The characters can be or my loved ones. The stories can be short or long. It’s my sandbox, and I can play in it however I want. Or, I can read. When my mind is lazy, I can venture into someone else’s world and let their descriptions really push my mind into an adventure within their walls.

Fiction does that, whether you’re the writer or the reader. Fantasy fiction, particularly. Science fiction, too. It all allows us to go somewhere and be something we aren’t currently. It lets us push ourselves outside the bounds of the lives we live, something healthy if not done to excess. Funnily, I remember as a younger man, living inside a fantasy world almost 90% of my day. It distracted me, and I lived out these fantasies inside my mind, even when I was at school. I don’t think I liked me very much. I’m pretty comfortable in my skin now… holy tangents, I didn’t mean to go there. Anyway…

I referenced it above, but I firmly believe that my desire for adventure has always been the reason why I can sit down and watch The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Star Wars, even Eragon (the movie) because they’re all about adventure. And the Heroes Story, but everyone knows that.

I’m rambling now. I really could go on and on about adventure. But I’m going to end this post with a quote from Oprah Winfrey:

“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”