I am in the upper Midwest as well. I am part of a men’s outdoor workout group. We ruck, and do outdoor calisthenics year round. It’s called F3, it is nationwide, the guys are great when I need assistance! We also did a mud run pre-COVID. I’ve also loved training for and doing GORUCK events. Maybe there’s a ruck club in your area?

ive also enjoyed gardening.

Is there any chance you could do O&M training? It may ease travel anxiety and you could talk to the instructors about activities people like to do in the area.

As far as at-home activities, there is reading, movies (netflix has been great with audio description,) cooking/baking, crochet/knitting/weaving, pets, programming, roleplay chat rooms or discord, fighting games (like soul calibur where you are always facing your opponent and the opponent is always coming at you - also distinct sounds,) soap or candle making, macrame, writing, singing, voice acting, listening to music or playing an instrument.

To make them feel more enjoyable, you could join an online community for those hobbies, but I find ones like cooking and crafts enjoyable on their own since you quickly enjoy the fruits of your labor!

For drawing, there’s something that I’ve started doing that is really helpful. Go get a sensational blackboard, this allows you to put a regular printer paper on the blackboard and when you draw, the lines raise up. You have to use a pen. Then, if you want to add colors to your picture, what you can do is get larger sized crowns and attach little braille letters to them. For example, yellow could be why, or pink could be PI. Basically, there’s a lot of adaptive ways I draw.

You’re about my age so here it goes.

I enjoy weight lifting, swimming, kayaking (either in tandem or singles and playing Margo polo with it). Growing peppers, audio books, movie clubs, investing club, BBQ’s

There’s more but that’s a good start. Really the 2 biggest things I don’t do is driving, and plying anything with a flying ball lol

Hope this helps!

Yeah, blindness is so diminishing... It's possible to find things to do, as I found coding, which I already did before going blind, but it took me 5 years to accept the mental drag associated with doing it with this disability, and sometimes I still find myself envying the sighted for having everything so easy and being able to fully immerse themselves in deep sensory experiences.

While I'm mentioning coding, I don't recommend trying it unless you have a passion for technology, because it requires some dedication to learn on your own, and I can't even imagine how hard it must be to start totally blind. I learned most of what I know with sight, and am able to make things that the sighted can appreciate, which is the only thing that keeps me going, because blindness killed my ability to extract enjoyment from technology.

Also, just like you, I don't go out very often, nor do I travel too far from home, since I'm afraid of getting lost and having to trust other people to find my way back. Fortunately I have a supporting family, a place to live in that's fully paid for, and a disability income that more than covers all my needs, so for the time being I'm fine.

What hurts the most for me is knowing that I will likely live with this disability for the rest of my life. There's been a lot of progress lately into a cure for glaucoma, with some scientists estimating that it will be available for clinical trials in at most 10 years, but I have no idea if my eyes can still focus properly because of a cataract surgery that I had which left me seeing everything extremely blurry and effectively killed my ability to read.

Running, swimming and Cycling is what I do! Running and swimming with a guide and tandem cycling. I usually just call local clubs and ask if they have anyone who would like to guide.

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If you have some vision left you can do art like I do, on the computer! I use a really big screen and high zoom levels on large canvases to do my work. You can get screenless art tablets for 35 usd and up. Hook that up to the computer and you can draw on it while looking at the screen and do art! If you vision is gone or nearly gone you could also use paints with diff texture stuff mixed into each color, like sand or fine wood chippings, and paint using your hands and fingers. Dont give up on art, you can still do it. I'll also second the other peep saying to try crochet and knitting, I've started those recently and have been having a lotta fun with them too. Video games are another hobbie I really like, there's some sound based ones out there and more and more are starting to have accessibility options like UI scaling! Also make sure you find somebody to give you some o&m training, sounds like you might need it.