I agree we act in reality. It seems to me the difference between a conscious body and other bodies is exactly that the former can act, the latter only react.
If a conscious body were mindlessly pushed along by events like any other body, then its consciousness would have no role or purpose, but would be only a pointless and meaningless epiphenomena blowing along in the wake of events. There would be, in principle, no basis for any reason to accept that any other body apart from one's own may also be conscious. As with many ludicrous assertions, that may be a defensible position. However, I'd suggest it's not a useful perspective.
I find Aristotle's take on time interesting. Certainly, to stop things moving would be to stop time, for one cannot imagine time without change. But to my mind this does not go far enough. It's not mindless mechanical movement that impels time forward, for such an impetus adds nothing to the future that is not already implicit in the present. That kind of "change" leaves the conscious body as no different than any other body, except that it is for some reason condemned ever to be a helpless witness to events, aware it is never to have a hand in shaping its own future.
So I'd suggest that the change that is an essential part of the notion of time is not the "change" of mechanical progression. It is rather an irruption of the novel and new into the world. We know what Aristotle did not know; we know the future is underdetermined by the present. There are many futures that can flow from this "now". Conscious bodies in particular are able to choose one future rather than another; I suggest it is this disjunction itself that is the stuff of consciousness.
