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What Were Your Past Obsessions?

When I was 4-5 years old I had a very unusual obsession with human geography because my family had a big atlas lying around. At one point, I had the capital, flag, and major imports/exports of every major nation on the globe memorized. Then I was introduced to the Nintendo Entertainment System, and everything sort of went downhill from there. : )
 
I can name almost every European capital.

(From Memory)
London
Cardiff
Belfast
Dublin
Paris
Lisbon
Rome
San Marino
Andorra La Vella
Madrid
Moscow
Helsinki
Riga
Athens
Istanbul
Vienna
Bratislava
Prague
Belgrade
Krakow
Oslo
Berlin
Kiev
Minsk
Budacrest
Bucharest
Edinburg
Monte Carlo
 
Past Special Interests... hmmmm....

Well, lifelong Special Interests that have always been with me since being a very young alien are:
/*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Astronomy/Cosmology
Mathematics (esp. Geometry, Trigonometry & Algebra)
the 1800's and living alone in the wilderness (even when I was 6, I wanted to be alone)
Harmonics and resonance (relaxes me)
Archery
Science (physics & chemistry)
Rocketry & black powder making
Star Trek (actually, just Mr. Spock - much perseveration over Spockisms still to this day)
Battlestar Galactica (the original series - but only 3 episodes trapped me)
Computers (building, programming esp. TCP/IP, Sun Microsystems/UNIX etc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

Past Special Interests that lasted only several months after mourning the loss of Sun Microsystems (a ~10 year SI) and trying to find a new one:
/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morse Code
Knot tying
Carabiners (real ones - actually, have been a SI for a long time before and still are. They're strong, shiny and can hold a truck)
The State Police Force
Common/Indian Myna birds (acridotheres tristis) (still going strong after 1 1/2 years - love 'em! You can even teach them to talk :)
Asperger's, Autism and Special Interests (still going strong after 2 years - after being diagnosed for the 2nd time by a different psychiatrist)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

Also, invariably I always go into my Special Interests like a herd of buffalo charging head-on into a fleet of freight trains. All out, full on, buying anything and everything I can get my hands on about it (expensive). Spending hours and hours, days, weeks, months doing, researching, not sleeping, constantly thinking about, dreaming about (really).

So there you have it. My whole bloody life story about my Special Interests :) (Don't think I left anything out)
What can I say?! I'm an Aspie :)
 
Since it appears my posts disappeared:

Sports logos (I still do to some extent)
Monster trucks (mostly their designs)
Flags
Finding expansion teams for the MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL (I wanted the NFL to expand to Akron and the NHL to Amarillo, etc)
 
Hi, new to the site, glad I found it and now can confess how I almost wrecked my marriage because of bonsai! First got introduced at a Japanese cultural centre in Toronto decades ago and just went nuts... could not get enough little trees, big trees, bush cuttings, anything that would grow a woody stem. Dragged my (now) ex to garden ctres and mountains and woods and nurseries every weekend, spent all our money on crooked twigs, pots, pebbles, soil, peculiar tools and more pots... eventually backyard greenhouses, until he could take no more (well, there was more to it) and gave up on me and my craziness... but I still can't pass anything green without wanting to take it apart, pot it in rectangles, and decide on a style. I even ended up giving some courses and now can boast of how many tree names I know the Latin for... a lot of good that's done me, that and 10 cents!
 
Right now, physics, the really weird kind. Which sucks because nobody likes to talk about it. So when I'm having a conversation with somebody I have to fight the urge to go, did you know that time is related to gravity? Did you know that you can travel forward in time, it's just a matter of speed? Like if you were orbiting the earth near the speed of light for two years when you landed it would be ten years later on earth? Sigh...
 
I remember running my finger along road maps, pretending I was travelling around my country, complete with car noises. :)
Another thing was I had a whole lot of fact books which I would read over and over again. :)
Ripley's believe it or not was my favourite book as a kid. :)
When I look back, I have no idea why I was so interested about those things. :grinning:
 
aspiemike said:
Right now, physics, the really weird kind. Which sucks because nobody likes to talk about it. So when I'm having a conversation with somebody I have to fight the urge to go, did you know that time is related to gravity? Did you know that you can travel forward in time, it's just a matter of speed? Like if you were orbiting the earth near the speed of light for two years when you landed it would be ten years later on earth? Sigh...
Click to expand...
I'm a bit of a physics nerd, too. Especially the "weird" stuff with the speed of light and particle duality. You can always send me a chat if you want to nerd it up, in fact, I've also been looking for someone to nerd out about physics with.
 
kasmanaft08 said:
Oooh...I also loved dinosaurs at one point (but my inspiration was Jurassic Park). I had tons of picture books I would carry around in school. I knew everything about dinosaurs.

In elementary school I also knew everything about the civil war. I would only listen to civil war period music, and any written assignment I did was some sort of Ken Burns ripoff. At one point I collected rubber fish bait, the colorful ones, until my mom made me throw them away. Cows, I had everything cow related. Cutting pictures from magazine and organizing them by theme in notebooks, I would do that for hours.

I knew everything about NASA at some point. I've had plenty of color phases where I would be obsessed with particular color combinations.

Oh God, I just realized how many obsessions I had...
Rocks, state facts, underwater animals, I collected beads (only certain shapes) for no apparent reason...
That sort of thing. there's always something.
Click to expand...
I collected rubber bait, too. Especially the salamander-looking things. : ) And I still haven't quite gotten over my obsessions with colour combinations.
 
Games (my clan) (ssot/tsu)
Sand
Moon
Dogs
Umm some i was really interested in
Sunset
Forrest
Art
Waterfalls
Photography
 
Mine are/were

Codename Kids Next Door/Princess Diaries (when little)
crime shows/TV
wanting to be famous
bra sizes and measurements
celebrities and the above
gaining/losing weight
paranormal stuff and shows
food pyramid/nutrition (when younger)
wanting to be another race
college
ivy league schools
shipping tv couples
daydreaming about stuff
medical problems and diseases
menstruation
puberty
certain boys i wanted to date
ghosts/haunted houses
certain female celebrities I wanted to meet
Tumblr (past)
witchcraft and wicca
buddhism
hispanic and portuguese culture
learning languages
chinese and roman/greek culture
gynecology
italian food and culture
using purses all the time
making money online
twitter followers/unfollwers/post count
facebook profile picture
quotes and the infinity sign
specific careers (changes daily)
prayer (compulsion)
being perfectly neat or perfectly messy
computer hacking
internet
graphic design/aesthetics
corsets
hourglass figure
marilyn monroe
1950s
1990s
certain numbers
vintage hollywood
modern hollywood
decorating
my cell phone&iPad
my computer
shopping/hoarding
Amazon Prime Video
Spotify
certain music over and over
mac and cheese
book characters
writing
etc etc
 
My past obsessions were studying atlases, reading science encyclopedias (and encyclopedias in general), receiving Omni magazine, and reading a lot about weather-related topics. I also liked to spend a lot of time cooking my own meals from cookbooks.
 
I've got to admit, some of these lists look more like a list of interests and not Special Interests. I'm not saying all, but I think some people don't actually get exactly what makes a Special Interest special. Unless it takes over your life, makes you spend huge amounts of time, money, research, drawing, writing about obsessing about, having it become your safehaven from the world - if it affects you in ways like that, well then yes, I'd say it was a Special Interest. Also, some of these lists are soooo long.
 
ImAnAspie said:
Past Special Interests... hmmmm....

Well, lifelong Special Interests that have always been with me since being a very young alien are:
/*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Astronomy/Cosmology
Mathematics (esp. Geometry, Trigonometry & Algebra)
the 1800's and living alone in the wilderness (even when I was 6, I wanted to be alone)
Harmonics and resonance (relaxes me)
Archery
Science (physics & chemistry)
Rocketry & black powder making
Star Trek (actually, just Mr. Spock - much perseveration over Spockisms still to this day)
Battlestar Galactica (the original series - but only 3 episodes trapped me)
Computers (building, programming esp. TCP/IP, Sun Microsystems/UNIX etc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

Past Special Interests that lasted only several months after mourning the loss of Sun Microsystems (a ~10 year SI) and trying to find a new one:
/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morse Code
Knot tying
Carabiners (real ones - actually, have been a SI for a long time before and still are. They're strong, shiny and can hold a truck)
The State Police Force
Common/Indian Myna birds (acridotheres tristis) (still going strong after 1 1/2 years - love 'em! You can even teach them to talk :)
Asperger's, Autism and Special Interests (still going strong after 2 years - after being diagnosed for the 2nd time by a different psychiatrist)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

Also, invariably I always go into my Special Interests like a herd of buffalo charging head-on into a fleet of freight trains. All out, full on, buying anything and everything I can get my hands on about it (expensive). Spending hours and hours, days, weeks, months doing, researching, not sleeping, constantly thinking about, dreaming about (really).

So there you have it. My whole bloody life story about my Special Interests :) (Don't think I left anything out)
What can I say?! I'm an Aspie :)
Click to expand...

I think any Aspie who has seen the TOS Star Trek series cannot help but have at least a brief fascination with Spock- he was the bomb. I doubt the character was aspergian, but he exhibited many of the traits due to his Vulcan cultural upbringing. Besides, he was the only bloke aboard the Enterprise who could rock a bowl-cut. I have to admit, I watch the originals just for the Spock- that's why I never got hooked on Next Gen.
 
One of my special interests from elementary-middle school was drawings of the manga genre that took hours out of my free time, creating my own characters (who, thinking about it now, did seem to resemble characters from cartoons that I watched, but in manga-style) and their own story lines.
 
As a kid I was obsessed with mice, I remember reading a lot about them and talking about them all the time to the annoyance of my parents and teachers. This calmed down a lot after the age of about 11-12, but they're still one of my favorite animals.

Other things that I could consider "obsessions", either stuff I remember being very important to me or just stuff I really liked and knew a lot about. Probably forgetting some here:
-Pokémon
-Sneasel the pokémon (oh MAN I was annoying about that on forums as a kid)
-Anthro animals/furries
-Nintendo games (still going strong to this day)
-Internet memes, in general (from... 13-14? and until 17-ish?)
-1337speak (in particular, the more "complicated" kind where all letters are switched)
-The Simpsons
-Certain internet forums
-Fun facts/random trivia ("useless facts")
-Hetalia
-Rhythm games
-Video game history (recent)
 
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