I know what you mean, but. Human spoken and written Languge very clearly _does_ something. It facilitates information exchange across time and space, catalyzing cultural evolution.
I just finished reading McCarthy's 'Stella Marris' and 'The Passenger'.
Anyone who enjoyed reading this linked transcript I imagine might also appreciate much of the themes treated in McCarthy's final works.
I found the passages on Oppenheimer interesting especially in light of Nolan's new film. Funny timing.
Brogue is genuinely beautiful. I know pure roguelikes should be white ascii on black, but it's incredible what a little color can do. And the way it handles dynamic events in its environments. Really makes the cave "biome" come alive.
Suttree is maybe my favorite of all his novels. If, as others here have suggested, you regard Blood Meridian an epic. Suttree is a picaresque, like reading Pickwick Papers on salvia.
Others have said, but institutionalized settings can be good for getting the "vetting" out of the way. Why do so many romances originate in school? Because each and every participant recognizes everyone else is in the exact same position he is -- a subject of circumstance.
Streets, transportation -- these are low-filter interstices. Maximum wariness is warranted, really regardless of sex.
If you're not interested in going to the club, bar, art class -- what are you interested in? Seriously. It's tough. If your hobbies are sticking your head in the sand / introspective study (mine are), you will need to jump outside your comfort zone or else expect some degree of social resignation.
It was helpful to see here a couple of the same issues I grappled with (to know "I'm not crazy"): feedback loops, prioritization / importance, communication.
On the topic of the dreaded Micro-Management, I read recently somewhere, "better to micro-manage than to not manage at all". That also resonated.
Sure, we can agree social media news and zero cost information dissemination is an Existential Evil, but ... if author had said "shout into a bag", "pound head against wall", or "drink a beer". Maybe we could just let it ride, for once.
Off topic, but as an introvert lurking in an introvert thread, I want to say: this is true professionally, too.
My boss's boss's boss put it this way: no one is spinning around in his chair at his desk, twiddling his thumbs, thinking, "_When_ will Tom ask me to meet over coffee?" But if you send him a note, and ask politely, and convey earnestness, odds are good he will meet you for coffee.
I recently finally got around to reading EM Forster's in-some-ways-eerily-prescient https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/...
I think you can extract obvious parallels to social media, remote work, digital "connectedness", etc -- but also worth consideration in this context too.
A small 3-ring binder, plus packets of hole-punched graph paper. Extremely cheap. The beauty of the binder is that it allows for easily rearranging pages, something notebooks do not. Thanks to Lion Kimbro for this advice.