Expensive, short-lived special interests

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I do, so does dad. Its not cool either.

I'm fickle by nature. I am married but I have crushes on other women, both from the media and those I have immediate contact with. Never act on it-- I hate other people touching me -- and the person changes weekly if not daily. However, that doesn't cost anything.

I guess have spent some money on special interests: mechanical watches on Ebay (the cheap Chinese movements, not Rolex type watches); buy in things I wanted in my youth; vacuums off of Ebay; wanted a safe car for my family that I could also work on, so I bought two old Mercedes-Benz. All these purchases, including the cars which were $1,500 each, I have spent less than five thousand dollars.

Nothing crazy I guess. But who knows, maybe I will get into Faberge Eggs someday.

FYI: Hey if anyone just has a computer just sitting around, send it to me!

I buy a lot of movies on impulse that I rarely ever watch. Heck, I hardly ever watch the ones that are my main interests! I also buy posters that I wind up taking down within a few months and books I never read.

special make-up effects

Yes. I relate. And, I understand the obsessional part of it too. As in, for me it's like.. even if I know logically that it must be an obsession and it's quite possible that I will never use the things after I've bought them, it's still impossible not to.
I've kind of .. started to incorporate it into my life and just prioritise things. Like, if I have things prioritised then when I get enough cash to buy stuff (which happens sporadically at the moment, because I am a student) I will spend it on worthwhile-obsessive things. Mostly.

It's pretty hard to tell though. In that way obsession is fully like living with a ski mask on.

At the moment I'm looking at changing my degree to an anatomy based one. I accidentally found a Medical bookshop sale recently - I was unable to resist buying $300 worth of books and some surgical scrubs. They're mostly great books.. let's hope I go through with the degree as planned (at the moment it does look like it).
They were all at bargain prices, so what the hey.. and I do love psychiatry.

Maybe it's just the process of finding what we love, and being passionate about it.

Josh, I related to your post too. Dude, you just have good taste. I do play piano and went through the same thing. I bought a $600 portable keyboard that I hardly use any more.
I don't like people so I don't play it in public, which I think was the original intended use.
If I could I would mail it to you. Weighted keys are the only way to go imho.

I love mountain biking but I've been doing it for a long time.

Thats not short lived then is it?

Some of mine are very short lived. Then they go away and sometimes come back.

I get these all the time, luckily I rarely go out and buy things related to them in a hurry. The most money I've spent on a short lived obsession is the price of a movie related to it

I have intense, short-lived interests but generally I just read deeply into the topic, so it doesn't result in them being expensive. I went through phases where I intended to buy a drum kit, and another time a viola, which could have been pretty expensive but I never did in the end. My most recent interest would be the book In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, but it's starting to wear off now as I've nearly finished reading it. I spent hours researching the context of it on the internet when I really should have been doing my homework or something instead. :/

I think the thing that bothers me the most is when I become fixated upon a person...does this happen to anyone else or is it just me? It is seriously just the same thing to me as being interested in a particular subject matter, because people are so complex and interesting. It is really irritating though because I constantly think about them and I talk about them too much and people assume that means I am in love with them or something, which is incorrect. Some of my friends who I have known for years now understand that I go through those phases with people and that it will pass in due course, but I started a new school in September...I like my new school, but it presented me with a lot of different people which made me liable to focus on one of them for a few weeks with intense interest and then move on to the next etc. Right now it is one of my newer friends, haha. Is it just me that feels this way about people or do other people experience it too?

Lol, I've done exactly the same thing with bikes ... twice :p The wife wasn't too happy about it. I think my worst one was probably astrophotography. Luckily I was pretty broke at the time, so I couldn't do too much damage.

I think that the short-lived (possibly expensive) special interest thing is learning style related.

I know I get really involved with mine, and that that's also how I learn. I've recently tried studying in a/the 'normal' way and it was so boring I just played stupid online video games and chatted to friends while I was doing it. I mean, I did learn as well .. very, very slowly. When the exam was coming up, I fully knuckled down about 4 days beforehand and just basically memorised most of the course. It was quite interesting.
My ultimate aim is learn to manage myself (because I still haven't learnt enough balance to be optimally functional, or sometimes just 'functional') but I've really found this year that
I have to take my stubborn preferential attributes into consideration, or even I can't over-ride myself.

When it comes to creative projects, usually if I can't finish what I've started immediately it just dies in the a$$. This means I now become more conservative when making decisions about how to work. Rarely does something come back from the grave.

Also, I don't think my spending style will ever be any different. I have to pay bills as soon as I get money, generally, which I prefer anyhow because then they're out of the way.

Currently, I am becoming rapidly interested in stamps for use in the art I make (and therefore purchasing such things online.. 3 purchases so far, doing well).
I am courting a textiles interest, although I know better than to make any purchases in that direction. I am so impulsive and it's frustrating just looking at things, but .. you know.
Luckily I have my recent compulsive book purchases here to peruse.

Not for the best part of a year. Between April 2009 and March 2010, I spent quite a considerable amount of money on retro computers and video games and went well into my arranged overdraft limit on two occasions. The only ones I still use and collect/play games for are the Commodore VIC 20 and the Sega Game Gear.

I don't regret the experience because it was a tremendous amount of fun getting to know all the computers/consoles I either never got to play on or hadn't played on for years. Plus I managed to gain/renew two special interests that give me a great deal of pleasure.

^ ^ Yeh, that's kind of cool.

I definitely have ones that I don't regret. They're just a pain when I accidentally run out of money for things I'm supposed to actually need.

Other times, things are awesome.