List your obessions through the years in order

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I'm curious how many obsessions you guys went through in comparison to me and how it affected you and how much time it consumed.

I think my first "obsession" was Star Wars (I was around six) I was just completely obsessed with anything related to those damn movies and talked about it for hours on end. This lasted until I was seven or eight years old I believe? then I think it was Goosebump books/t.v series after that (child of the 90's here).

- Then at age fourteen I was obsessed with gangster rap/gang movies/Tupac ect. this lasted for a year or so back in 2003-2004.

- Then when I was seventeen I became obsessed with the dictionary and learning to speak eloquently. I went around speaking these "big words" I barely understood trying to get people to think I was intelligent. Though I ended up sounding pretty silly as I started using sooo many "flowery" words in a sentence people just couldn't even understand me.

- At age 18 I became obsessed with makeup after watching those "youtube makeup tutorials" and started buying enormous amounts of MAC, Nars and other high end brands and wearing so much of it I looked like a hooker. This took so much of my money; I probably spent thousands at Sephora during this time it was just ridiculous. I was totally obsessed.


Now I'm just pretty much finished with experiencing obsessions. Sigh.. all tired out I guess. Thank God. Nothing really "does it for me" anymore.


What were yours? how intense were they and how did they affect you positively and negatively.

As a child - drawing. Then that molding non hardening clay.

As a teen - modeling and writing short stories.

Early 20's - Crafting.

Mid 20's to early 30's - making reborn dolls. Playing Second Life, a virtual reality online game.

mid 30's - Sculpting in clay life like baby dolls.

Late 30's - sculpting realistic doll house food.

Now - absolutely nothing. Drifting lost and frustrated.

**edit: Sorry - that is as much as I can muster to your questions. Very long, very bad day. Also forgot one, so added it in.

As a child I collected bank forms
As a young teenager I was into horses
As an older teenager I was into Madonna and Movies
Then it was drama
That changed to writing poetry later on (had a few published but it was years ago)
That changed to psychology after that
That changed to parapsychology after that
Then it was jigsaw puzzles
Then logic puzzles
Then it was cross stitching
Back to movies again
the link between nutrition and mental health
Paleo nutrition
Fossils and geology
Video making
Species of Shark, both modern and prehistoric

Something like that kind of order anyway...

Preschool years: Dinosaurs and Beetlejuice (animated series) - Don't remember much about this obsession except that I used to pretend that I was Beetlejuice and I made my mom be Lydia.

Age 5 - 12: Balto (animated movie) - I watched the movie a lot and had the title character as an imaginary friend..

Age 8 - 11: Pokemon - My mom says that this was my most intense special interest during my childhood years. I spent hours upon hours curled up in a corner of the couch underneath the lamp playing Pokemon Red & Blue (and later Gold), to the point that my mom was worried about my health and made me take breaks to go breathe fresh air outside. I had a whole slew of Pokemon as imaginary friends.

Age 8 - 19: Anime - This one branched off of my Pokemon interest. It was my longest-lasting special interest. I recognized the names in the credits of the Pokemon anime as being Japanese and started to seek out other "Japanese cartoons" (as I called them) on TV. I watched a lot of Toonami (especially Rurouni Kenshin) and at one point made my older sister tape Inuyasha for me when it aired on Adult Swim in the dead of night.

Age 19 - 21: Tim Burton and Johnny Depp collaborations - Specifically, Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Sweeney Todd. This obsession was very intense, and I became very upset when I knew it was coming to an end. I drove myself crazy waiting for Dark Shadows to come out in 2012, hoping it would revive my interest. It turned out to be a huge letdown.

Even though I haven't been obsessed with Burton/Depp movies for the past year, I'm still having a lot of trouble letting them go, mainly because I can't find anything to replace them.

Age 20 - 21: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - A secondary obsession that ran alongside my Tim Burton/Johnny Depp one. I frequently fantasized about my favorite Burton characters befriending the ponies. Anyway,I watched it up through most of the second season ("Hurricane Fluttershy" was my stopping point). I amassed a ton of merchandise which adorns the walls of my bedroom.

For the past year I have been without an obsession. No matter what I try, nothing seems to "click" with me. Like Foreverlost I might be done with experiencing obsessions. This upsets me greatly because I got a lot of enjoyment from the feeling of being obsessed with things. My obsessions were my life, and I just feel so empty without something to focus on.

Umm

Age 9-17: Obsessing about random people in my classes that I did not know that I became fixated on for some stupid reason
Age 14-19 Rock music
Age 18-now Obsessing about people I actually knew and was more often friends with.
20s so far: Gender roles, LGBT issues, being disliked by other women, being an aspie female
18-present: Aspergers, autism, other disabilities
Age 9-present (on and off)- Started as making up stories to fill the boredom, lack of social life and entertain myself. Evolved into making up stories to full my people obsessions about individuals I was fixated on.

Before age 9= oddly enough, no real obsessions.

Um:
From the age of 7, (I still have it now) serial killers, crime forensics, etc.
12 (still have it now) music and various sports
16 (at least, maybe earlier) another person on the spectrum
22 Running
23 films, Nintendo DS

I'm sure Championship Manager featured in there at some point too.

I have had some really weird ones over the years.....

2-7 years old

- Primary one was logos of all kinds - especially television/video logos and logos of familiar places (i.e. the local zoo, restaurants and grocery stores). I would point them out whenever possible, draw them, and even make up my own constantly.
- I was also obsessed with reading, and read at a very advanced level for my age.
- Minor ones were The A&W Root Bear, books in particular series, elephants and dinosaurs

7-11 years old

- Main one was my imaginary world: "Brockland" complete with geography and characters - would strongly prefer this world and the characters in it to the real world. There were multiple imaginary worlds with Brockland - some characters were human, others animal, and others resembled people in my grade (called the "Partnerships")
- Another main one (7-10 years) was women's bathing suits and their back patterns: would label them all, count them at the beach, work them into my "journal" stories and draw them endlessly. I would also ask my classmates questions about their bathing suits.
- 10-12 - Major one: Beanie Babies! I knew every single detail about them and collected them obsessively.
- 11 years old - Another imaginary world of a group of girls at a boarding school
- Other minor ones: surgery, anti-meat/vegetarianism, silo patterns, dairy packaging, novels in a series (i.e. Ramona, Bunnicula), camping and biking - I had a camp for my stuffed animals in our backyard woods.
- I also had a "private box" where I would clip out stuff I found inappropriately funny/ made books with stuff I knew was inappropriate (mostly sexual stuff with lots of swearing).

12-16 years old

- "Bun's Class" and "The Consultants" - two groups of imaginary characters who helped me deal with teenage issues
- Hip-hop/R&B music - knew all the lyrics to countless hip-hop songs, taped them off the radio, listened to them endlessly
- Saturday Night Live and Mad TV - taped skits off the TV and memorized them
- The Simpsons - have watched most episodes at least twice
- Boys that I and my friend Sarah obsessed over: finding information about them and creating stories about them
- age 15-17 - sorting a huge list of names that I found on the internet, reading about AS.
- Age 15-17 - Yearbooks from my own and other schools - I'd photocopy the pictures from them and sort people into various categories, like their friendship "cliques", couples, etc. It was my way of dealing with the social world without actually being in it.

17-21 years old

- Rock music - especially Nirvana/other grunge bands
- Certain guys
- Writing poetry, often about the guys I obsessed over
- Bus schedules (16-18 years old)
- Improving my social skills by making friends at school and through a youth group
- (19-22 years old) Sex

22 - Completely focused on my social life to the point where it was maladaptive

23-today - I wouldn't call any of these obsessive: but I like learning about ASDs (especially adult/transition-related/social skills issues), creating a list of people with ASD in my area, mental health, mentoring others, altered states of conciousness, vegetarianism, yoga, music that spans across genres, and school.

2-3: collecting cardboard food boxes (my mom only recently told me about this one). Also, balls of yarn.
6-7: very large collection of rocks that I was always organizing, rubbing against my face
8-10: spelling
12-15: the occult, paganism, tarot, paranormal etc.
17-21: classic literature and poetry; the history/politics of prostitution and the sex industry
21-24 (now): cooking, gardening; natural birth, child-rearing... pretty much anything related to homesteading, self-sufficient living, and family-life.

Also, my 2.5 year old has been obsessed (for over a year) with anything and everything relating to The Legend of Zelda.

Age 0 - 5: Anything with machinery or moving parts; fans, heaters, obsessive need to watch the trash truck, etc

Age 6 - 12: Electronics; radios & TV sets, and still mechanical things and machinery. By 6 or 7, I was taking radios apart and putting them back together, and by 9, I was learning to do basic repairs of radios and TVs. By 13, I had a part-time job at a TV repair shop.

Age 10 - late 20s: (Continuing TV repair as a career), collecting and restoring antique TV sets from the 1940s. Still somewhat interested, but not so much.

Age 13 - present (46): Motorcycles-- dirt bikes, street rockets, and lately an affinity for vintage collectible motorcycles.

Age 16 - present: Bodybuilding & weight lifting.

Age 30 - appx. 40: Toyota cars and trucks with RARELY SEEN Diesel engines. I still have a complete collection of them, but interest in "playing with them" has waned a bit.

Age 40 - present: Mainly still riding and playing with street motorcycles, and still a little of the vintage electronics interest and Diesel cars.

Charles

2-5 - collection of stuffed monkeys which I would arrange in a circle and sit in the middle of the circle and counting by different numbers , 2's , 3's 7's and counting to 1,000 by 1's and stories on tape which I would memorize and go around reciting.

6-13- Imaginary worlds-spent the majority of these years in them. Certain series of novels : The Babysitter's Club and Baby Sitter's Little Sister series Sweet Valley High , Ramona Quimby series , Janie series (not sure what it's actually called). Also fixations with other girls in the school who I wanted to be would pretend to be and my imaginary worlds which mainly revolved around the novels and pretending to be a character from them and the other girls at school who I would pretend to be (this was mostly near the end of the period-when I was a little older). I also had odd imaginary worlds -one was an imaginary universe where you could jump from world to world and one world was all purple, one was all green, one was all blue ect. I got this idea after becoming obsessed with the school buses that took kids to summer school.....they were colour coded according to the area of the city they transported kids from and there was a purple bus, green bus, blue bus ect.

14-16-T.V shows- animated sitcoms :the Simpsons , King of The Hill and regular sitcoms like Sienfeld. I literally spent all time when not in school watching them- 7/8 hrs a day. I was particularly obsessed with the Simpsons and got really mad when I missed it. I would watch 5 episodes of it a day, at different times on different channels.

16-19Leakey's angels : Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey, Birute Galdikas and their work with the great apes. Evolution and primatology in general. Atheism, environmentalism and vegetarianism (I was a vegetarian for a few years). Reading first novels related to the above social issues I was interested in and later reading classic lit. Here I would daydream and be in an imaginary world where I was like Jane Goodall and studied chimps but it wasn't as all consuming as when I was a child.

19-22- Reading -different things -for awhile only classic literature again., Particularly Oliver Twist and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens -read them over and over. Related daydreaming.

22-24 - Sephardic Jewish history and culture. Related daydreaming.

24-28- Reading again- mainly fantasy novels and some classic literature -returning to classics now. Related daydreaming.

Edit: Mine do also seem to be less intense than they used to be. I still spend an inordinate amount of time on them but the passion and need to pursue them is less intense.

childhood into early teens
-Rock Music and vinyl (reading everything about bands of interest, sorting & collecting LPs and 45s)
-art and artists (reading histories, studying artwork, copying paintings)
-mad magazines (sorting, collecting, creating graphs & charts about the collection)

late teens into early 20s
-60s counterculture (reading, collecting artifacts, researching obscure people, events, products and media, learning crafts from the time period)
-Saturday Night Live reruns from the 70s (VHS taping them all night long, watching them over and over and over and over)
-SNL cast members, especially Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi but also anyone related to show and the band
-still into rock music and vinyl (now cataloging and graphing massive LP collection)
-Dead Head (going to lots of grateful dead shows, writing down set lists at shows)
-old TV shows (Donna Reed, Rob & Laura Petrie, the Cleavers, Dobie Gillis, Patty Duke - all my friends were black & white on came on after 11pm!)
-making art
-mad magazines
-Stephen King books
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr books
-making hats
-reading, reading, reading

mid-late 20s
-Garage sales
-Thrift shops
-still into rock music and vinyl , still cataloging and graphing massive LP collection)
-still making art

30-40 (& current)
-learning about gifted kids (mine)
-sculpting fairies and other small characters (made a successful small business doing it)
-crocheting
-still collecting LPs, sorting and reorganizing them but no more graphs and charts. Maybe an occasional excel spreadsheet
-poi spinning but my lousy motor coordination preventing me from succeeding
-Dexter show
-Neil Gaiman (was sad when this one ended, was not a romantic obsession though)
-Big Bang Theory tv show (I watch anywhere from 2-10 episodes a day, everyday) I watch a few other TV shows and will rewatch them but TBBT is my go-to show
-the new business I am starting (craft related, internet based)

I tend to fall down the rabbit hole easily and have short obsessions that can last a few days, week or months but they can be quite intense. I actually feel lost when not involved with an intense interest/obsession.

My obsessions were many. One of my long standing, and most disturbing, ones was my interest in corporal punishment and torture. To wit:

"Martyrs Mirror", an account of Christian torture over the ages, kept me turning its pages.

The meaning of the sentence "hanged, drawn and quartered." The convict would be hanged - but not killed - just so his neck would snap and he'd become an instant quadriplegic. He'd then be drawn around town along the cobblestone streets for hours while townsfolk peppered him with rocks - all of which he could see because he was still alive. Eventually, all four limbs would be tethered to horses who'd render him limbless on a command. Gruesome, indeed.

Medieval torture tools. The rack, the iron maiden, the Spanish Donkey, etc. A lot of the more gruesome devices were targeted for the genitals.

Quickest and most painless form of execution? Beheading. It's a surer death than a hanging or gunshot. In Saudi Arabia the executioner keeps the Quran under his cutting arm as he's about to carry out his job. The reason for that is he's carrying out Mohammed's will and he's only allowed to raise his arm just far enough without causing the book to fall. The executioner faces Mecca but not the convicts because they've turned their backs to their god.

The most popular form of execution over the years has been death by fire. It's not instantaneous, is extremely painful and serves as a reminder for those who would transgress.

China has the most brutal capital punishment system. There are 68 crimes that can earn you the death penalty in China, including stealing copper wire or accepting bribes.

Walking away (apostasy) from the religion you were born into (Islam) is punishable by death in some countries.