Life long obsessions.

[RCMerchant]

I have always had an obsession with horror movies,comics, and books for as long as I was a little kid in the 60's. I bought comics,paperbacks,model kits, magazines (alot!), hardcover books, toys-bubblegum cards-everything.
And I still do-but not to the extent I did when I was between the ages of 8 and 16! 
But I'm still pretty obsessive. 

Howzabout you guys?

[Alex]

Oh hell yeah. Things that obsessed me as a child still get me now. Books, Star Wars, Judge Dredd... If I didn't have other responsilities to watch out for then I'd devote my life to collecting them even now.

[The Burgomaster]

I have always had an obsession with horror movies,comics, and books for as long as I was a little kid in the 60's. I bought comics,paperbacks,model kits, magazines (alot!), hardcover books, toys-bubblegum cards-everything.
And I still do-but not to the extent I did when I was between the ages of 8 and 16! 
But I'm still pretty obsessive. 

Howzabout you guys?

Basically, the same as you. I grew up reading comics and paperback books, building models (especially the Aurora monster models), watching movies (especially horror and sci-fi), and playing with lots of toys and games (I had some great toys in the 60s and 70s). My obsessions haven't changed much, except I don't build models anymore. I don't play with toys, but I'm still heavily into board games . . . the more complex the better.

[indianasmith]

When I was five years old, I was playing in a sandpile in the neighbor's yard and bulldozed up an arrowhead with one of my Tonka trucks.
That sparked a lifelong interest in history and archeology, plus an "arrowhead fever" that persists to this day - I've now personally found over 9000 complete artifacts and tens of thousands of broken ones.

[Rev. Powell]

I liked horror movies since I was a kid. That's the closest thing to a lifelong obsession.

Second is my interest in girls, which started around 11 or so, then really took off when I hit puberty.

My interest in bad movies (and weird movies) started when I was about 17.

My interest in drinking started when I was 18, but has definitely matured to the point where I like fine liquors, not getting s**t-faced.

[ER]

Death

[lester1/2jr]

I don't know if its an obsession, but I've hated the song "you light up my life" for the greater portion of the time I've been alive. I was like 4 and hated it and still do

[RCMerchant]

Death

Death itself is boring. You Die.
HOW people die- now that can be interesting! Hit by a truck? OD'ed on dope? Killed in Hiroshima or by John Wayne Gacy?
When murder and suicide  happens in you own life, with your own family, it gets weird.   
I usta read lotsa true crime books. I don't so much anymore.

[Alex]

Toasted cheese.

[RCMerchant]

Bread.
I'm very picky with the bread I eat.
I eat the Hillbilly brand bread, and bagels, and English Muffins, and Mexican flat bread, and biscuits and cornbread once in a while. I Like rye- but it's gotta have the seeds!
But I really like bread. It's sometimes the center of my meal.

[Alex]

I really enjoy a crusty loaf.

[Leah]

Death

Death itself is boring. You Die.
HOW people die- now that can be interesting! Hit by a truck? OD'ed on dope? Killed in Hiroshima or by John Wayne Gacy?
When murder and suicide  happens in you own life, with your own family, it gets weird.   
I usta read lotsa true crime books. I don't so much anymore.

She might be referring to the DC character Death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_(DC_Comics)

As for me it's always been cars.

[Allhallowsday]

...
My interest in drinking started when I was 18, but has definitely matured to the point where I like fine liquors, not getting s**t-faced.

My interest in drinking is piqued when I find cheap good red wine.   

Bread.  I'm very picky with the bread I eat.
I eat the Hillbilly brand bread, and bagels, and English Muffins, and Mexican flat bread, and biscuits and cornbread once in a while. I Like rye- but it's gotta have the seeds!
But I really like bread. It's sometimes the center of my meal.

I don't particularly care for caraway seed in my bread.  

Death

Now that you've joined the Cool Kids in the wake of your birthday, this subject should diminish in importance.  As you gain experience, time will  go faster and acceptance easier.  You will realize that your obsession is with Life.  

[ER]

...
My interest in drinking started when I was 18, but has definitely matured to the point where I like fine liquors, not getting s**t-faced.

My interest in drinking is piqued when I find cheap good red wine.   

Bread.  I'm very picky with the bread I eat.
I eat the Hillbilly brand bread, and bagels, and English Muffins, and Mexican flat bread, and biscuits and cornbread once in a while. I Like rye- but it's gotta have the seeds!
But I really like bread. It's sometimes the center of my meal.

I don't particularly care for caraway seed in my bread.  

Death

Now that you've joined the Cool Kids in the wake of your birthday, this subject should diminish in importance.  As you gain experience, time will  go faster and acceptance easier.  You will realize that your obsession is with Life.  

Dang, I should've gone with Death of the Endless, El Misfit is wiser than me!

AHD, honey, you give me too much credit, I want to know what comes after our heart stops the way some people want to know if it will rain next Tuesday. (Yes, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac.)

Since, as I oft say, half my DNA comes from an island where people still post death notices to mark the anniversaries of distant passings, I'm afraid it's buried at a cellular level. As far back as I can remember my young life was filled with stories of all these martrys and (obviously dead) saints whom I was told just LOVED hearing from me, so as a preschooler I used to keep up running one-sided conversations with them in my head. (The more ghastly the saint's death the better, with Saint Sebastian especially getting mental postcards from me, since anyone spending eternity filled with arrows probably needed a good distraction.) My maternal grandmother in Galway actually took as a sign of holiness so that it warmed the dream in her heart that I might one day have a vocation to holy orders. (Boy was she ever wrong, I didn't even make it out of tenth grade a virgin: ibid.)

As a child I used to read the obituary pages because they were so darned interesting and clipped out good ones to keep in a shoebox, which actually weirded out my Irish mom more than my US dad, go figger. Since Dad's acceptance encouraged me, I used to spread the coolest clipped-out obits on the living room floor in front of me and read them to him.

"Wonder what Mrs. Martin is doing now?" I once asked him, my thoughts focused on a deceased old lady the paper said used to fly airplanes for the post office during World War Two.

"Lying around," Dad replied.

In time I graduated to Emily Dickinson and Edward Gorey and Edna St. Vincent Millay....and of course Death of the Endless, and to my humiliation found The Gashlycrumb Tinies utterly hilarious. Eventually this led to The Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead (the first fascinating but useless except for the parts about evading crocodiles, the second upliftingly positive and life-affirming) and finally to Courage the Cowardly Dog, but that was a little intense even for my tastes.

Last year I wrote/channeled a hundred-and whatever-page imagining of a dead person recounting his life and detailing what the place he is in happens to be like. (His mother still wants to beat me up for it.) When in 1999 I read The Secret History, by Donna Tartt, I wrote her about a line in there concerning why she believed the ancient Greeks feared death so much as a culture, while other people, like the Egyptians, embraced it. She wrote back that the Greeks saw life as precious and death as horrific, and I thought if someone could be liberated from thinking about death that person would be better off. So I actually decided to try and did live life la-dee-da for about a year, until the worst thing that ever happened to me happened to....well, okay, someone else, but it bullseyed me too, knocking me emotionally, spiritually, mentally flat like nothing ever had before or has since.

"Tried to forget me, didja, Evelyn?" said Death with a coy chuckle. "Remember, dear, my business card is very, very cold."

So when I eventually picked myself back up I figured death was just too big a part of life and history to not give its proper due in the form of considering what it is, exactly, a medical situation or a spiritual one? And that's where I've stayed stuck in the mud for eighteen years now, no longer either innocently fascinated like I was a child or shunning it like I tried to do for a while in college.

Maybe that's why I go to cemeteries like some people go to parks. (Yet I cannot look at a dead person, even in photographs, and almost never visit the graves of those I've loved. Some of them never.) 

Deep down I somehow suspect death chose me.

[Alex]

Be patient. You'll find out eventually.