Some interests...

Post Reply New Topic

What are you're interests?

Do you ever get so involved with your interest that you forget to eat, sleep, or do anything else?

I have a very wide area ofinterests but a few I alawys cmoe back to.

Numismatics, Japanese (the language), and Magic (Illusions) .

Also, something I always come back to is the thrist for more knowledge.

It's not a good thing.

When I was in the midst of my 12 year severe gaming addiction, when I was rest mode, which consistend throughout the day of over 9 or so hours, I would read every subject I could in the encylopedia.

Does anyone else have this problem?

It seems to be less about what I know and more abuot how I interpret it.

I read philopshy, numismatics, political science, politics, sociology (and a book on it), psychology, machining (counterfeit detection and alterations for US Gold coins and others, See book "Numismatic Forgery"), sleight of hand (illusion, magic), psysiology, anatomy, body fat, nutrition, excerise science, survival science, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, nutrition therapy, therapy/counseling, social work, mathematics, and read much literature, as well a mythology (especially Greek) and more stuff.

recently I read 2 great short stories by the great man voltaire, "Candedi" and 'Micromega" both incredible, although I prefer Candedi. I feel it is a solution to Dr.Faustus (origininal) or Goethe's verison "Dr.Faust" where the black poodle (sheepdog) transforms into the devil Mestophilious.


Honestly I feel like Dr.Faust alot. Never satisfied with anything, always seeking more, and always disappointed when I get there. I felt like when I lost 101 lbs and went from 30% bodyfat (obese) to 10% I would be happy. No it didn't work like that.

So my addictions kept switching. I've always wanted to feel important though as I've had alot of loss and rejection my whole life. So I always wanted to be famous. I would practice my magic often 6 hours everyday for over a 2 years, day after day after day, not missing a dya.

I got good I guess but my showmanship suffered. So I bought a book on showmanship and am reading (and struggle) with that. I'm struggling because I do not know who I am at all, and how am I supposed to be me as a magician, or another personal, if I don't know me in the first place?

Eventually I put in a little over 2,000 hours of practice into my magic, but specifiaclly into 1 tric. My friend told me it takes 10,000 hours to master something, and in 10 years I will be as smooth as him.

I think 8 more years I will have it mastered.

What are your interests or hobbies and do you ever dealt with addiction or obessions, were you ever afraid what those might lead to?

Kevin

I'm really interested in doing Wii Fit Plus right now and there was a time that I almost forgot to eat.

When I was younger I used to run on about a 28 hour sleep cycle when I was really into something. I'd basically keep going until I dropped, sleep then repeat, with meals when I thought of them.

These days I do a lot of stuff involving metalwork with lots of noise from hammering, grinding etc. I have a rule that I stop at 8pm so I don't upset the neighbors too much. I'll very often keep going all day without a break, for days or weeks at a time. I only have two meals a day because I never remember lunch.

Here is one of my projects, built completely from scratch. Start with a big pile of metal, stir vigorously for 2.5 years and this is the end result:

I sold it a couple of years later because I lost interest in it...


As far as addictions go, I do have a problem with reading. When it gets out of control I can go through 4 or more novels a day! Thank goodness for ebooks. If I used paper books the house would be completely filled. You don't want to see my Amazon bills when I get depressed!

RazorEddie, waaaay cool, man!

GoldCoinLover, the journey's the thing. As life goes on, you'll learn to enjoy the journey at large, as well as the smaller legs of it, better over time. Then reaching the goals won't be such a letdown. This change happens by itself over the years, to a certain extent. But keeping it in mind as a thing to try for is also good, as long as you don't punish yourself for not changing fast enough. It's okay that you are where you are with this stuff right now. Be patient with yourself, and try not to be too judgmental about how long it takes to develop. You really will achieve more balance, in time, especially if you ever take an interest in meditation (which can help with your attention and focus while still letting you be relaxed, as well as many other benefits). Don't worry too much if meditating becomes an area of interest. There are worse things you can regularly, frequently do with your time for long periods than stuff like sitting and focusing on your breath or passively observing your mental processes!

Some of what you're saying is quite exiting to me. I'm not into doing magic tricks myself, but I've had friends who were, and they're quite good. I think it's neat! One of my high school friends did magic and clowning at my younger sister's birthday party one year, and she's never forgotten how great that was. He hasn't become famous in the years since, but he sure made her happy!! ! I'll always be pleased when I think of that.

In the past, I did a lot of writing free verse poetry and sort of abstractish ink drawing. Holding the pen hurts my hand too much to do it for so long now, but I used to spend hours and hours at it. I had a studio apartment, so it wasn't far to food or the bathroom, but I did get very preoccupied. Living alone meant few interruptions and being able to pretty much choose what I wanted to do and when without interference.

I've gotten so involved in my activities that I've had to finally stop and make myself do things like move around and eat so that I don't get stiff and sick. I'm better about it now, in my 40s, than I was in my 20s. As a kid, not wanting to give up an activity for any sort of break did cause me some problems. My mother had to try to work together with me on that, but she found a way, and it really helped.

Right now, I'm into:

* Asperger's - reading books and Websites about it, especially stuff written by people who have it, and also all my reading and posting here, at Wrong Planet, but I have to be very careful about eye fatigue as a result
* Exercise - planning my routines, reworking them to make them more effective and practical, using them to alleviate stress, depression, and fibromyalgia pain, and, I now suspect, using exercise as a kind of stim sometimes, perhaps

Some interests that are long term but that sort of have an ebb and flow to them are:

* Spirituality - I've even written my own book, so that my ideas could be clarified, organized, and presented for the public to read (I don't proselytize, but I like to know that, if anyone might find even the smallest benefit in reading what I've written, it's available to them for their review and contemplation. My Website has it for both reading online and download, as well as many related articles I've written.)
* Drumming - I play for belly dancers, so I'm involved in it each Monday night and at SCA events on some weekends, but practicing the rest of the week at home and whether or not I compose anything are what come and go
* Designing and operating my various Websites for different things (personal and also SCA related)

That's all that springs to mind at the moment. I'm in the SCA, but I'm not a history buff. I just like it because of the activities, learning opportunities, good values of many of the people involved, diversity of the people (who all have their weirdnesses, so I'm not unusual for that in such a crowd) and opportunity to do fun stuff with my girlfriend (which means we can help each other out in the social environment, because we each have our strengths and weaknesses, so we support each other and are more able to socialize together than separately).

Take good care of yourself. My girlfriend sets a timer to remind herself to do housework in short bursts on the weekends when she's home, instead of either sitting around on the computer all day or making herself do nothing but drudgery. She says timers are available for download onto a computer, too. I may try one out to make myself get up more often when I'm doing computer things. We've talked about it, and she says different kinds are available. I'll have to learn about them so I can pick a kind I like.

Good luck to you! Thanks for starting this thread!

Last edited by MindWithoutWalls on 11 Feb 2012, 2:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.

If I am on the internet, reading a book, looking on the internet, videogames- I can forget to eat, sleep or other stuff that I was supposed to do.

Yes, when I'm involved in my interests I can easily forget to eat and go to bed. Usually my husband is around and he reminds me. But he is away the moment with the consequence that I had the joy of being fully involved in my interests and I didn't eat my dinner until 3am right before I went to bed at 4am. Ooops.

Thanks. These days I am more into off-road so my vehicles look a bit more, er, agricultural but at least I am less likely to kill myself driving them


Um, me too with the Asperger's, especially related tests and quizzes.

BTW to reduce eye strain get a big monitor, wind up your font sizes and sit at least 3' away from it. Sitting close to a monitor is very bad for your eyes. When I'm reading books the font is wound up so the characters are 3/8" tall on a 22" monitor.

Good advice. I always try to be far enough from the screen, and I often enjoy text enlargement, even though I can see the text clearly without it. So, your suggestion is a proven eye protector. Also, my girlfriend has, in the past, had to remind me to get up long enough to turn on the light when it gets dark, and I find the reduction in contrast between the dimness of the room and the brightness of the screen to be a relief when the light goes on. Making white backgrounds be slightly gray also helps, so I use that for my own document editing and e-mail writing. Sometimes I also override the colors on a Website for the same reason. Fortunately, Wrong Planet has these nice blue and green backgrounds to look at in the forums.

I would forget to eat. My mom would always bring me foods when I was living at home, and even now my roommates will remind me of dinner time. Then food and taste became a big interest for me in my mid-20s. Now if I'm working on one thing, I'll still be craving very tasty food, and I'll be really disappointed when one interest either ties up my money or time so much that I can't get really good food. I'm now very well known for dragging anyone and everyone all over the place to try out favorite meals and restaurants with me. It's become quite an expensive interest. Growing up, I had a very average diet. Now I'm constantly craving new and different and fulfilling flavors.

I guess you could say I've become a Foodie.

I have not brought my piano with me from my parents' house since I moved out, but when I was living with them I would play anywhere from 2-5 hours on school nights and 2-15 hours on weekend days. Most times it would be the same few songs being played over and over again, so I have no idea how my parents and sister managed to not kill me for all the piano playing I did for all those years. If I had any food or drink, it usually sat on the piano bench with me and tended to go cold before I would finish it, as sometimes I would forget it was sitting there.

I've always been into jigsaw puzzles and games, and those tend to distract me from that whole sleep concept quite often.

In my world, I always blamed OCD for obsessing on things, and no one ever cared to stop me because I was never causing problems for anyone else. Sitting at a table and putting a puzzle together for 10 hours straight never hurt anybody. I would eventually regulate my own sleeping and eating, mostly because while I lose track of time and tend to be late to just about anything and everything, I never wanted to flat out not do what I was supposed to do, like go to school or go to work, and I really hate being overly tired and hungry.

I get absorbed into anything I start, I find it hard to ease myself away from something I'm doing , & I'll often be absorbed at something well into the early hours 4am typically - at the moment; contributing & reading threads on this forum , reason being, i've recently just been un-officially diognosesd as haveing aspergers.

Other times; its decorating the house, theres a lot to repair all around the house & I'm also a perfectionist & hate cutting corners on quality work regards repairs.
My hobbies are modelling to do with 4mm scale railways, i know nothing about steam engines but have a particular likeing for photographing plate girder railway bridges & making 4mm scale models of them to be included on my own model railway.
Also, I've started to build a 4mm scale model of a 4 claw scrapyard crane that'll feature on my railway project.

Other intersts & hobbies are also to do with railways, I study old & new street atlas's as to trace & explore dis-used railway lines, as sometimes the rails are still present i like to replicate this in model by purchasing old model railway steel railed track as to leave in a damp enviroment for as long as it takes for the steel rails to go rusty, obviously the trains wont be able to pick up current from the rusted rails but it supposed to depict a **dis-used** rail line or similar.

(** = some fellow railway modellers on another model railway forum do not understand my logic in this, its model track portraying a dis-used rail line in model - so no need to "run" trains on it ! !! ! )

Dave.

I read all about people's obsessions, and think 'that could be so much fun'. And now I'm quitting school, I could do that.