Crux

I have almost no direct knowledge of mathematics. I took various mathematics courses in school, but I put in the minimal amount of effort required to pass and immediately forgot everything afterwards. When people learn foreign languages, they often learn vocabulary and grammar out of context. They drill vocabulary and grammar in terms of definitions and explanations written in their native language. I, however, have found this to be intolerably boring. I'm conversational in Japanese, but every ounce of my practice came in context: either hanging out with Japanese friends who speak limited English, or watching shows and adding to Anki new words or sentence structures I encounter. I'm convinced that humans must spike their blood sugar and/or pump their body full of stimulants such as caffeine in order to get past the natural tendency to find it unbearably dull to memorize words and syntax by rote and lifeless connection with the structures in their native language. I've tried to delve into some mathematics recently, but I get the impression that most of the expositions fall into one of two categories: Either (1) they assume that I'm a student powering my day with coffee and chips and that I won't find it unusual if I'm supposed to just trust that once I spend 300 hours pushing arbitrary symbols around I'll end up with some sort of insight. Or (2) they do enter the world of proper epistemological explanations and deep real-world relevance, but only because they expect that I'm already quite well-versed in various background information. I don't want an introduction that assumes I'm the average unthinking student, and I don't want an exposition that expects me to understand five different mathematical fields before I can read it. What I want seems likely to be uncommon enough that I might as well simply say: I don't care what field it is; I just want to jump into something which assumes no specifically mathematical background knowledge but nevertheless delves into s