How can one be both obsessed and zoned out?

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In addition to aspergers, i have ADHD. It makes me wonder - how can one be both heavily obsessed and focused, yet prone to "Zone outs" and the "Fade outs" that come with ADHD. One time im all like "Ohh molecular biology/physics/ahtropology LETS LEARN THIS!!" and one moment im "Ahhh my head - what i do here?"

I find my stamina to study subjects to be very unreliable. Sometimes i can read 80 pages of a book, and sometimes i struggle with the introduction.

Zoning out doesn't entail that someone has lost focus entirely, I sense that many people use the term 'zoning out' to mean that a student is not focused on what they are supposed to be focused on. Most people, when they zone out, are day dreaming about one particular subject, or their attention has been brought to an object in the room, or they are just sleepy and overwhelmed. Either way, Zoning out could indicate an attention span that is stubborn, and won't easily move from one subject to the next, which is part of having Aspergers.

LOL - and this is part of why I call myself a walking contradiction - although I think 'paradox' is more apt! Oh, you nailed it!

Do you mean "focused" and zoned out?

But it's not necessarily a contradiction (in my opinion.) People who zone out cannot properly move their focus from one thing to another, so they may end up stuck on one minute detail or object. That's the same as being super focused. It doesn't mean no focus whatsoever.

I can relate to this topic a lot....I'm also diagnosed with ADHD AND AS. I don't think being zoned out and being obsessed are necessarily mutually exclusive. There are different ways I can conceptualize this:

1) When I'm daydreaming....in my fantasy world......I'll be so focused for hours and hours on the same fantasy (mine are really repetitive) but I won't hear my mom leaving the room or the house or calling to me. I'm intensely focused on my fantasy/obsessed/sustaining attention but I'm "zoned out" in that I'm unaware of what's going on around me - in my environment, I'm in a different "zone"! It can be like this with something like reading too...where I'll tune out for X number of hours and not be aware of what's happening around me- so it doesn't have to be literally be fantasizing or in a "fantasy universe" or "world"........just very focused on what's going on in my head and not what's happening around me. This is hyper focus which occurs in both ADHD and ASD's.

2) Sometimes I'll tune out of reading my fantasy novels and daydream about the fantasy worlds in them or dream about/think about a particular character and what I think he/she should do etc. In this case I'd be obsessed with the topic but not focused on the reading properly because I zoned out.

3)The inconsistency that you talked about in school - sometimes you're obsessed with science and studying intently sometimes tuning out. I'm like this too......some years/semesters I did amazingly well (strait As and A+s) and sometimes I would nearly flunk out. It depended on my level of interest and motivation at the time. Sometimes I attribute this to my bizarre brain with its combination of disorders. If I think of it this way then the two symptoms are paradoxical and sometimes I'm one and sometimes the other. As a kid too I was oddly inconsistent...I spoke early and when tested at around 7 or 8 I had a verbal IQ of 143. However I did horribly in elementary school. I was constantly stimming and in my fantasy world. Every teacher I had since pre-school said I was "in my own little world" and needed help I would do things like take my coat off in the middle of the field while I was supposed to be playing a game with my gym class and just wander off of the field without telling anyone. I would stand up and yell at other children when they broke class rules, I memorized and recited the list of class rules but then I would disobey the "sit in your seat and do your work rule" without realizing it. The thing is most people, especially girls (I'm female) with AS who have high IQ's do NOT present that way. They are not normally so conspicuously socially unaware , they often get overlooked until they are much older, whereas my preschool teacher was concerned about me right away (I didn't get diagnosed until 14-but AS didn't exist at the time). Anyways I think it was the combination of AS social unawareness and inattentive ADHD symptoms that made me that way.

I really need to learn how to quote:

Yes, I agree - and you are very astute. That's why I said I think paradox is more apt: (dictionary.com) a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

I like the comedian Stephen Wright's joke about his nephew having HDADHD - high definition attention deficit disorder. I'll have to put on the dvd because I'll blow the punchline trying to wing it here - I such at jokes - it's to the gist that 'he can hardly focus, but when he does ..."