tao lin

i feel that i have a lot in common with him but whereas he had
phase 1: combat loneliness with books (reading and writing)
phase 2: self-healing through uncommon means and nonfiction (philosophy, science, miscellaneous)

i had the phases in reverse...

i had a long cycle of self-healing and then i'm just kinda like wow i feel great i just want to do fun things now and my one "unhealed wound" or "unsolvable mystery" was "the people thing" whereby i just felt i could not connect with people and it pained me MORE to have friends than to not have friends (but it made me neurotic thinking that there was something wrong with me for not liking my friends) and ever since discovering this new world of books (i read before but i didn't really connect with books like this; i'm reading books with a different intention in mind and so i'm discovering a new type of reading experience; my reading experience is now richer having encompassed an understanding of a greater map of reading experiences) i feel that i don't worry about the "people thing" anymore and i also feel like books are a big part of my way of having fun as well

i feel like once you get through a lot of philosophy books (of which books like tao te ching are a part) you just realize that you are ready to have fun now. that's REAL living, having fun. reading books about how to live life is like prepping to live life but it doesn't prepare you at all for what life really is. life can only really be understood by living. all the writing we do is to review it. all the reading we do is to try to bypass the experience or to celebrate.