I'm 22m years old and living alone for the first time and would want to read some non-fiction books that would help me deal with solitude, loneliness, emotional regulation, and acceptance with dying alone.
I need to pass the time when I have nothing to do and I don't really want to doomscroll.
by 51bwastelander
4 Comments
Be Here Now – Rama Dass
Anything by John Gierach. They are essay collections about the outdoors, usually focused on fly-fishing. He does a great job of taking you to the places his visits through his purpose. Titles include Standing in a river waving a stick, At the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman, Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers, etc.
Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat is also good. A Canadian naturalist studies wolves in the wilderness. The book details his time studying the wolves and his living mostly alone during the study.
If you think you’re an introvert, I recommend this book:
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Setting aside the depression flags in your post for the moment, I think it might help to seek out books that recontextualize your living situation right now.
I would try to find something you found interesting about your new living situation and learn more about it. Maybe you can find a history of the city or neighborhood you’ve moved to. Your pfp suggests you might be exercising, so examples might be memoir/histories of exercise like Sweat by Bill Hayes. I can’t say for sure what you’d find engaging, but I’ve personally found it helpful in circumstances like yours to just seize on any thread I find and pull as hard as I can. It’s the pulling that helps, not whatever heap of fabric I’m left with. We’re all patchwork assemblies, anyway.
If you’re dead set on solitude as a topic, my dad always used to paraphrase from May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude, which might be worth a read: “loneliness is the absence of others, solitude is the presence of the self.”
Best of luck in your new digs.