Making people feel terrible for good reasons.

You know what I like about this book I'm writing? The main character has an anxiety disorder that keeps him from doing a significant number of things (mainly going to college without stressing out about the whole thing). Throughout the story, he continually tells himself things like "I should work through my meaningless panic" or "This is silly, I'm ridiculous and inferior" or "Why can't I be better than this and be like people who aren't as stupid as me?" and general self-defeating things that would also be said by society at large.

And your average reader who's part of society at large would nevertheless probably be feeling sorry for this character throughout the whole story (because fiction has this way of getting you to look inside a character's mind and make you relate to them or at least think positively of them in ways you might not have if you knew them in real life). And at some point, this hypothetical person will be reading the book and yell at the character, "Stop saying such negative things about yourself!"

And then the average reader will realize, with a sense of rising horror and shame, that the kinds of things the character is saying to himself are the kinds of things they would say to someone with similar problems if they met them in real life.

(I love writing things that make people feel horrible for very valid reasons.)

Buy bad soda.

I've attempted to live more "adventurously", for a certain definition of "adventurous". For me, "adventurous" is understood to mean "a situation that you've never quite been in before and which provides an opportunity for failure and bad outcome, which you of course must take". For me and my dull little life with no chance for adventure in the traditional sense, this usually means "doing something slightly different and seeing whether or not it's a good idea, like doing tasks in a slightly different order or mixing two types of tea that I typically don't mix together". However, last Wednesday, the opportunity for adventure manifested itself in the buying of bad soda.

Here is what happened. My library hosts a variety of events that supposedly draw people to the library and help them understand what a beautiful safe haven of books and community experiences it is. I don't know if it helps them realize that libraries are indeed magnificent, but it's still fun. Some Wednesdays, there are "anime nights" for teenagers, and while I am arguably not a teenager (I'm eighteen and I'm in college), I'm still allowed to come because I look young enough for the program and the guy who supervises it knows me and likes me. I've developed some acquaintanceships or at least positive relationships with some of the people there. It was originally an adventure when I started coming to the events and didn't know if I would like them. It's no longer an adventure because I know I like it and I know exactly what I'm going to get (that is, goofing around while making Doctor Who references and not actually watching anime - it's that sort of thing).

Now, I did get a chance for adventure when three of my acquaintances decided they would leave the library to go to a soda-and-ice-cream shop nearby. I thought that would be fun, so I followed them. That wasn't an adventure; I knew what the place was like and I knew we'd be able to get there and back again pretty safely and predictably. It was when we got to the soda shop that the real adventure started.

A fact about me: I am cheap. I am a penny-pincher. My money and I are not soon parted. Sometimes I make the surprising act of buying something immediately instead of thinking about it for ten minutes, but normally, I dislike spending my money unless I know exactly what I'm getting and the price is reasonable (sometimes frighteningly reasonable). The fact that the sodas were about $3 each was a deterrent to the possibility of me buying one.

But then I noticed cheap soda. I noticed Christmas-themed sodas still left over from the holiday season, which were on sale for $1.50. That spoke to my financial sensibilities. I purchased an eggnog-flavored soda, which sounded horrible but still piqued my curiosity at a reasonable price. I explained to my compatriots that it would be an adventure. Which it was.

As could be predicted, it was bad. It was bad soda. It tasted like warm eggs with cinnamon in them, and that's not what you want your soda to taste like, even if you like warm eggs with cinnamon in them (I hate eggs and I have a semi-tolerance for cinnamon). I ended it palming it off to the only member of our group who had no purchased their own soda. (She didn't like it either.)

It was an adventure, though. Had I bought a soda I knew I liked or no soda at all, I wouldn't have a story to tell. I could have said, "Oh yeah, I had a soda," or "I didn't drink anything" and I'd just move on. But now I can say, "Oh yeah, I had eggnog soda. It was terrible. It tasted like warm eggs with cinnamon in them. I know, right? Sounds disgusting!" And now I know never to have eggnog soda again. Yes, this is probably one of those lessons that is completely incommunicable to any other situation, but it did result in this interesting story which I tell now.

So the point I'm trying to make here - most people don't have the opportunity for adventure in their lives, but if you find a tiny opportunity for it in your life, you should do it. Especially if you have nothing to lose but a little time and/or money and either a nice experience or a good story to gain. For me, my unexpected adventures are found in sodas. For you, it may be something completely different. All I can say is that buying bad sodas is always a good bet.