Meltdowns from special interests?

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Do you ever put your heart and soul into them, follow each step 'by the book' only to have them blow up in your face? Do they cause you despair in other ways? When you are extremely disappointed do you try to 'punish' your interest or do you turn your back on it for a while?
For me when something doesn't go according to the script, if I'm not having anxiety I'll become slightly annoyed but try to deal with it rationally, but if I'm already stressed, it becomes as if that part of the interest is almost taking on human bully characteristics and I react rather poorly. After the 2nd or 3rd 'battle' I'll banish the item for a few days

I put an entire year into creating a pop album. I did a little bit of promotion, but real promotion just costs too much money so now the album is just collecting dust in my computer. In the end my voice is only so-so so the recordings would've fallen flat on their face anyway. I don't even know if the screenplays I've written are any good. Dang this cursed AS which makes me shift from special interest to special interest!

My main special interest, the movie collaborations of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, has caused me quite a bit of grief. I will be fine for awhile, but then I'll go through phases where it feels like I have lost my passion for it. I will try new things in order to see if new interests develop, but I always go back to my Tim Burton/Johnny Depp obsession. Doesn't sound so bad, but the whole cycle sends me on an emotional roller coaster. It certainly doesn't help that I was disappointed with Burton and Depp's latest movie, Dark Shadows, when I had spent an entire year of my life dedicated to tracking its progress during production and being excited to go and see it in the theater.

My special interests are very important to me, because they always revolve around works of fiction and I wind up taking on my favorite characters as imaginary friends, who I love even more than most real people. So whenever I am displeased with them, I either banish them from my mind for a few days or, if I'm in a particularly dark/morbid mood, I "kill" them (I put "kill" in quotation marks because my imaginary friends are immortal and cannot actually die). Banishing them isn't an uncommon thing for me to do, but I have only "killed" my imaginary friends once, and since they are both immortal and special to me, they didn't remain dead for long. Sometimes I worry that my imaginary friends may rebel against me one day. Not because I actually believe they're real, but because my imagination makes them seem that way and my imagination has the potential to get out of control.

I can just imagine... "When Imaginary Friends Attack" Just don't ever build any machine that allows people to make their imaginary friends real. Who knows what would happen if people started using it?

I have had interests that resulted in me having a large collection of objects as a result of my interest. I'm not sure if I should say what those objects are because I try not to give away too much information about myself, but I sometimes would worry about what would happen to my collection in the future. I was always worrying that they would be destroyed somehow or malfunction. I didn't really have a meltdown about this, but the worrying was so extreme I would stay awake nearly all night, just worrying.

I also worried about what I would do with the collection once I lost interest, because I knew I would some day. I was afraid of getting rid of them because I knew I wouldn't be able to let them go.

Despair? Yes, quite often. My problem is that I start way too many projects and never have the capital to finish them. Thus, I have several disassembled cars at my house that I can't afford to buy parts for and finish. This stresses me out as I sort of want to get rid of them and move on but can't. Worse still, I like them too much to simply junk them, so I am now surrounded by a big mess. I have put into place a zero population growth strategy though so that I don't take on even more incomplete projects that I will never finish. Right now I am trying to do the right thing by my life and finish at least one of my cars so that I can sell it and free up space to finish some of the others. However, I don't make a lot of money and have a total lack of energy all the time so getting started on something is hard for me.

Although I love my imaginary friends, I would never want them to become real and if someone ever invented a machine that allowed imaginary friends to become real, then I would not use it. A large part of the appeal of imaginary friends is that you control them. If they were to become autonomous, it would be no different than being friends with real people, which would defeat the purpose of why I have imaginary friends in the first place.

Realistically, "When Imaginary Friends Attack" would probably involve a bout of schizophrenia, something I've always been afraid of developing. But I am on a strong anti-psychotic medication, so the chance of that happening isn't very high unless I were to get off of it.

This is me on many levels. I can trace the moment of the first MD as I know them to building this specific hot rod scooter, promising a friend I would be able to meet with them, then having the ignition stator coils unravel and get chewed up by the flywheel right after I got off the phone

Funny you should mention scooters as they are on my list of things to play with next. I actually had to fight myself not to buy a step through motorcycle (Honda C70 Passport, AKA Super Cub) last month and instead put the money into something I needed. It sucked too as I have been lusting after it for years now (Soichiro Honda is one of my heroes) and it was less than $300.

Oh man, kick yourself a little harder! I would go for an Urban Express, those can be had for around 3 and are fairly easy to tune

This particular project was frustrating yet rewarding as I was taking a generic Chinese 150 and repowering it with a 2 stroke 250 out of an Odyssey. I'm at the point of selling it due to my hyperfocusing every spare dollar on it at the expense of my runners, leading to 3 more basket cases.

What I ended up doing is writing the name of each busted bike on an envelope and throwing $10 in each envelope the moment I come back from a job, and treat those envelopes like a black hole so I won't be easily tempted to dip back into them

The problem is that I already have 5 cars, all needing work and taking up space around my little house. I have one that needs about $300-500 more in work before I can sell it for $3500-5,000, so it has to go first. The money from that one can be used to finish the second, and so on. I actually sat down and did a detailed plan of how to fix my life a while back and am more or less following it. It includes things like economic efficiency and returning to school to finish my degree. If I get rid of the projects, I will have enough money to fix the problems with my house. If I fix my house, I can refinance my high interest mortgage and save $200 a month. If I do that, I don't need to work as many hours to pay my bills while I am in school. I also won't have all of the distractions around me and will increase my chances of success. I will also further increase my economic efficiency as I will finally be able to finish building out my other Geo Metro and see 45-50 mpg in the city (that car has an elaborate plan all it's own!). Do all that and I can do another project, like a 4x4 truck or a custom moped I designed to fold up and fit the back of a Geo Metro (like a Honda Motocompo fits a Honda City). (I have odd and eclectic tastes in things based upon perceived utility.) I'll stop here or else I will go off on 5 different tangents explaining every detail of everything in my plans...

Mine too!!

I'm into the old Honda cars... I know all the torque specs for my 3G Civic by memory, I got the last set of OEM fenders in North America!! ! . My step-father got me started, he had a 1G when I was a kid. It's a special interest......

I wish I could find the specs for the Mugen 3G Civic parts so I could make my own or have them made for me. But I'd rather go elecric.

I have been looking at getting a Ruckus... But I want one with at least 250CC. Stretched with the fat tire... I've been watching kijiji, They want $5000+ for swapped Ruckus's's's. I will have one even if I have to build it myself. 50cc is not enough (6' @ 140lbs) and the Big Ruckus is ugly.


My current scoot is a 6.5HP 200cc Baja Warrior Hardtail.... No governor, fat tires, total POS but its a blast when we go camping, it tops out at 60kph, SCARY on gravel, I have in fact dumped it a couple of times, in mud. Thinking about swapping the 6.5hp with a v-twin 20HP, comet clutch and turf saver tires... I really like the sound of the v-twin...... Or I could go all electric two wheel drive..... choices.

It's funny, I hate the noise of bikes and other machinery in the city when they go by my house or whatever but I love being out on a bike, the sound and vibrations everything zipping by really fast and close, doesn't bother me in the least, until I stop. Then my ears are ringing, I feel like I'm still moving, heading into shutdown mode. I know whats going to happen, but I still do it because it's so much fun.

I do not think I would do to well on surface streets on a bike. Not with other drivers and distractions. Country roads are okay.

I've been having a bit of a time with my current special interest which is DIY electric cars/bikes using in-wheel brushless hub motors. I have the car and most of the know how, the bottle neck is money. I know I could make my little car do 0-60 in 2.4 seconds, I just don't have the capitol and won't for the foreseeable future. I know where to order all the parts from, I even know the mailing address's of the suppliers.. I dove way deep down the rabbit hole... I even have white papers.... Nothing I can do about it. The car had a fresh paintjob done on it 2 years ago. I've driven it 8 times since, the last time I parked it in a parking lot and some shmuck hit my new paint on my new fender with a shopping cart, no note of course. So the car has been in the garage for over a year, Needing an oil change and to have the winter studs swapped for the summer tires. I didn't even register it last year. I have enough spare parts I could make a whole second car if I had a decent shell to put them all on. I love driving that car more than anything else I've driven, yet it collects dust. 1.3L of Raw Horsepower

Last edited by MarthaCannary on 25 Jun 2012, 3:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

While we are on the topic of Soichiro Honda, have you ever read any biographical information about him? From what I have read, I sort of get the feeling he may have been an aspie, or at least BAP. He was very technical, didn't care much for the financial side of running his company, and was known to go to board meetings covered in grease. He was also an original thinker who saw things differently than those around him. Honda the company just hasn't been the same since he passed. The spark and the brilliance of his mind is gone from the products and everything since has become more and more bland.

Just think of all the unique and innovative products Honda produced during his lifetime.
-Super Cub
-S500/600/800
-N360
-1300 Coupe 9 (it's engine is pure engineering art)
-CVCC engine (stratified charge engine)
-VTEC
-Beat
-NSX

And the list goes on and on!

Don't even get me started, we'd have to start a new thread... The people that live next door, bought a brand new Civic last year. I parked mine right in front of theirs on the street, both cars a similar silver, mines a hatchy theirs is a POS sedan. After they gave me the "wow, cool car!" bit they actually asked me what kind of car it was..... "Uh, same as yours, about 26 years older" I said, to which they replied: "really?!?! No way Maaaaan, that's like sooo cool!" I just turned and walked into the house.


Everything from the 3G till now is essentially garbage. Added weight, worse mileage, poor handling, seriously ugly to look at. Yuck.

The Beat was terrible.... The Bulldog was amazing.

Missed that the first time around! I went through a time where I was obsessed with that concept but came up with a few drawbacks (that I then solved using ideas drawn from the Citroen DS and SM). But uhh... yeah... we'd have to start another thread because I can go on and on with my technical analysis of the positives and negatives of hub motors. (pun intended!)

I drove (pun unintended) my boyfriend crazy for over a year with brushless hub motors. The one person I consider a friend, the only person I talk to that isn't family, he got nothing but brushless hub motors for months, everytime he called me.... He's the one that referred me to this forum... hehheh.... My boyfriend and my best friend are two separate people, I just realized they way I worded it made it sound like one person. I just woke up...

It got to the point that I was thinking of other uses for them. The BF and I are going to be hitting the road in a truck/fifthwheel setup in a couple of years, full time. So i got to thinking, of course. I could use two 15" in-wheel brushless hub motors in one of the axles of the trailer. I can use them to charge the battery system while we drive, (we will be having a much larger system then normal people, we are nerds, we use a lot of power, think off-grid, solar and wind). I can also use those same motors as helpers to get up over the big mountains we will be climbing, and on the down side of the mountains use it as regen braking.......

I'm also into Peltier devices. Thinking about building a high temp system to attach to the exhaust of the truck. Just trying to figure out how to cool the cold side enough with fluid but keep the weight down. Again, got to the point in my research that I realized I'd need more money.... The skills are there, just not the funds.

It's actually kind of upsetting because I'd like nothing more than to see some of my ideas work.

I just realized, if I could get up to 1Kw I would have just enough to power a small HERF gun without having to use the trucks electrical system. I'm kidding. No really.

I like your ideas but can see some flaws in them. The problem with using the hub motors for charging batteries in the trailer comes from thermodynamics. It won't be free energy as the energy required to drive them will have to come from the vehicle towing the trailer. Due to losses in efficiency (nothing is ever 100% efficient!), it will cost you more energy to drive the trailer wheels than you will receive driving them. Plus, you have to be VERY careful if you decide to power the trailer wheels rather than leaving them unpowered. A car and trailer is not the same as a train on rails. The trailer will want to push the car and will try to do that through the hitch. This can (and likely will) lead to it jack knifing the vehicle combo when things are the least bit unbalanced.

The primary problem I have with the hub motors though is unsprung weight. In essence, you are making each and every wheel that has them a bigger, more powerful gyroscope. Now some of the weight disadvantage is mitigated by replacing the brakes with the hub motors but it will still be heavier. This will make the suspension less responsive to inputs than if you didn't have the hub motors. My solution then is to mount the hub motors inboard, at the middle of the track width and drive them off of a strong set of CV axles. This lets you put the weight at the most advantageous spot in the vehicle and eliminate the unsprung weight problem. If anything, it is actually better than conventional cars in terms of unsprung weight as it still eliminates the hydraulic brakes. In turn, this allows for slightly softer spring and dampening rates to control the vehicle, leading to better ride quality for the same handling.