Obsessions with maps?

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Since I was kid I was obsessed with drawing maps of imaginary countries,and also by reading Geographical and Historic atlases.
Due to that I was quite good in Geography.

I can even draw pretty accurate map of the world,and almost every continent,plus rivers and cities within it.
Even today,in my spare time I draw tons of maps of fantasy lands,and to be honest I don't know why I do that...
Also,I watch with obsession historical atlas,and I am able to watch one map for over 15 minutes.
Again,I don't know why I do that,but I found it quite pleasurable.
And this viewing and making maps is almost hypnotic to me.

And due to this hypnotic gaze,I had sometimes problems in geography and history classes in elementary and high school.


So..does anyone else have similar experiences?

You pretty much described me in a nutshell.

Tim

Sort of, I was very interested in historical maps and borders - a lot of what I've always been interested in is people, not necessarily on the individual level, but on the macro level it becomes a lot easier to predict what a mass of people will do, and maps are yet another way of looking at the way nation states act. Not quite what you're asking, but I did pore over maps for a long time. I need to get me a historical atlas.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by roadmaps. I used to enjoy plotting out the best routes from one remote place to another. My parents would always let me chart the course when we were driving on vacation.

I could spend hours doing it.

AS sufferers often latch on to a subject. With me it was spaceships as a kid then electronics as I got older. It looks like we can add cartography to the list as we have a few map experts here.

Ed Almos

Ocasionally i go through my atlas obession, it use to be real bad when i was a kid. Houston, Tampa St. petersburg, and minneaplolis -St paul were my favorite urban areas to look at. i also liked looking ath the lesser antilies in the carribean with St. Lucia being my favorite island. i wanna live there so so bad!

I think map obsessions are common with AS. Not with NLD though, and actually my mom despaired that I would ever understand longitude and latitude. I also have basically no idea where anything is in relation to anything else, even when it comes to my town and neighboring towns.

Edit: I do go into obsessional mode where I memorize capitals though. Sometimes I just want to memorize things, and I'll memorize things like poetry or country stats for weeks.

Maps and world geography have been lifetime fixations for me. I still have my childhood Encyclopedia Brittanica atlas, completely falling apart now. It's probably the most important relic from my childhood. I'd always grab it and page through it whenever I was stressed (which was constantly). Atlas-stimming definitely helped keep me sane.

I used to draw maps of imaginary places and now I like old maps of places I know, mainly 19th century.

I was never really obsessed with maps, but once when living in Montreal I realized how little of Montreal I really knew so I started stuying the maps in the phone directory. I also studied a map of Edmonton when I moved here.

I wasn't aware that my oldest son had a map obsession until he began to drive, and then he would take our local map book with him and mark down every road that he had driven on.

This pointed him toward urban planning/GIS for his major in college. He's very happy with this idea as a career.

Kris

maps rule

I used to love atlases and looking at maps as a child.
I am still fond of looking at them, but I wouldn't say it has ever been an obsession.
I used to also like drawing plans of my ideal bedroom

I used to draw maps when I around 8 or 9 years old and I knew the capital of almost every nation.
I have at least 8 different kinds of atlases and couple of books on cartography.
This is my mouse-pad: