Why is it your obsession/field of study?

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My obsession is Tim Burton's movies, specifically Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd and Edward Scissorhands.

I love all of the characters played by Johnny Depp from those movies, plus Alice and Mrs. Lovett. They are my imaginary friends, and over the past 22 months that they have resided in my mind, I have come to love them as though they were a secondary, imaginary family.

I have come to realize that this is because I see different facets of myself in all of them:

Alice - We have the same color and texture of hair (though not the same length), she is 19 in the movie and I was the same age when I saw the movie in theaters, and we both defy social norms and have elaborate imaginary worlds. We also do just fine without boyfriends or husbands.

The Mad Hatter - We are both mentally ill and have difficulties controlling our tempers at times.

Edward Scissorhands - We are both sensitive artists who are naive to the ways of the world, who have been treated badly by people who have failed to understand us. We are also generally very kind and gentle souls, but we will become aggressive if pushed too far.

Sweeney Todd - We both feel that we have been greatly wronged by our enemies and wish to exact revenge upon them. Though the similarities end there, because while Sweeney has actually acted upon those feelings, I haven't.

Mrs. Lovett - We are both deeply in love with people who do not return our feelings, and we have gone through great lengths to try to make the objects of our affections love us back.

Willy Wonka - We are both very childlike people with strange senses of humor, whose eccentricities are written off by others because of our high intelligences.

Right now I've got four special interests going.

My favorite is gardening and self-reliance. I like it because it gives me a very solid sense of control. Instead of getting mad over the price and the quality of stuff in the store, I feel good because I can grow it better and cheaper and more local and then put it in jars so I can have it until next season. Right now I'm learning about root cellars. Building one will be a lot of hard work-- I like hard physical labor. And when I'm done, I will never have to can apples or winter squash or carrots et cetera et cetera again. I think this interest is going to last a while. I've been on it for four years and there is still so much to learn.

My biggest is kids. I taught myself to like it because I had one. Then I liked it so much I had two more. I like it because there are very few truly right or wrong answers-- everything is an experiment. And I like it because MY kids think I'm wonderful just the way I am, perseveration and anxieties and all. They ALWAYS want me around.

My oldest one is AS. I've had that interest for 14 years. I like it because I like learning about me. It makes me mad sometimes-- all the awful and sometimes untrue things the experts say. But I'm happy that some of them are finally learning to listen to US.

My most annoying one is religion. I like to study comparative religion because it's very interesting seeing all the different ways people choose to understand God. I like seeing all the ways all the religions have different ways of saying the same thing, and how one religion will usually have one or two things that it says better than all the others. I think that they're all right about some things and they're all wrong about some things-- and that's how I learned about shades of gray. I think religion is a good microcosm for human nature. It's my most annoying special interest because MOST PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE TO TALK ABOUT RELIGION.

Field of study : Anthropology.
Obsession: (apart from video games ) Entomology

Currently trying to find a way to do both, or at the very least, do something that deals with humans and ecology. :p I like nature and this planet. 'Tis such a shame that us humans are slowly eating away at it, but at the same time, I can't help but marvel at human ingeniosity.

Field of study/career: Medicine/science. I have been fascinated by the way the human (and animal) body works since I was very young. I chose to specialize in neurology/neuroscience because the brain/nervous system, to me, is the most interesting organ system of all. I have always really wanted to understand it, and it makes it so that one of my fascinations/special interests is my career, which means it doesn't get boring

Other obsessions: Languages--I learned Spanish in high school and college, and I just learned Romanian over the past 2 1/2 years. I am fascinated and taken in by the grammatical rules and structures of languages, and I'm also good at imitating accents, which encourages me to take study of languages further. Meteorology/weather: I think the way storms form is absolutely fascinating and learning to predict what kinds of things could happen with the weather is a long-standing special interest with me.

~Kate

Music, because around 1963 I heard a group practising, and I thought "that's for me." There was just something about the sound of those early electric bands, and I wanted to do that myself rather than just passively listen. The increase in sexual capital afforded to me by being in a band probably had a hand in it, and I don't think I'd have had any social life at all if not for my interest in music, but I think mostly it was just because it was there.

I have two main obsessions: Writing and Martial Arts. They crossover in a fascination for military history and mythology.

I've been completely obsessed by hand-to-hand combat in all forms since I was about six. To me, sparring or even fighting with someone is like a conversation, or like dance; a mode of communication. I never experienced any fear or distress when I got into fights as a kid; the other kid would put up his fists and I'd think "Ah, so we're communicating on this level now. Right-oh."

In a fight, whether serious or in fun, my brain goes into computer mode and I can calculate the precise the range, speed and force of every part of their body and mine, in motion, in a split second. Time slows down and I can see the kinetic forces moving. People say I'm really fast when I box, but it feels like I'm moving in slow motion.

Writing is the same; my awareness shifts and I can see other worlds, other places, projected in my mind as if I was looking through a window at something real.

Between the two, I can deliver huge tracts of information on military history, mythology, archaic weapons, Martial Arts theory, etc, etc.

astrophysics
engineering
art
design
logic

the last 4 acting as 1

Johnny Cash songs. I have been obssessed for over two decades now. I think I use it as a means to understand and express my emotions. For instance, when someone says "you look sad, whats wrong?", I will usually make some analogy back to a Cash song and say something like, I feel like what Cash is singing about in his song xxx.
It's a tool for me to understand and express emotions, which without I am totally lost on the subject.

Music, especially obscure percussion music. I collect all I can find. I'm also a completest—when I discover a new artist/band/composer that I like, I have to get all of their recordings.

Words - I've been a writer as long as I can remember and have always been fascinated with words, which are alive to me. I just love to play with words and write things. I've been a professional writer for years, having published hundreds of magazine articles and various books.

Field of study/career- writer, editor, publisher, jobseeker, student.

Obsession: Doctor Who, the longest running science fiction series of all time. Including the movie, the characters, books, radio plays, episodes, continuity, lists, and fan creations that have been piling up for 48 years and which I only noticed existed about halfway through 2007. I can analyze the show's TV Movie (my favorite movie) in such depth that I'm seriously considering writing a book about the various dramatic, religious, and canonical interpretations of a not particularly well-received low-budget cheesy film made in 1996.

I'm intending to go to grad school in pre-modern Japanese history. I first fell in love with traditional Japanese artwork when I was 11 and now I'm in my 20s so it's been a long-lived passion. I especially love the Heian era; whenever I see something relating to that period of Japanese history my heart races as though I'm in the presence of a crush. I intend to make it my life, regardless of how difficult the numerous required languages might be (classical Japanese, classical Chinese etc.). It is a thirst that nothing else can quench.

I've had an obsession with squirrels for the last six years. I love watching them and I collect everything squirrel/acorn related that I can find. One of my more prized items is a squirrel-themed tea set. I like to have tea parties with a friend or two and dine on acorn-shaped cookies. At some point in my life I will probably be a professor with a horribly cluttered office filled with stacks of books and papers and miscellaneous squirrel figurines. Or I could be a squirrel version of the crazy cat lady, eventually dying and being devoured by my beloved friends.

I have other long-held interests but they are of a less obsessive nature than the above two. I draw and paint and I enjoy computer games on occasion.

Professionally speaking.....

I spent many years as a securities trader working completely off of technical analysis aka Charts

For the last several years I've been involved in the munitions and arms industry.

Mathematics for me and in particular operational research / applied statistics and cryptography.

I love puzzles, and I love that there is an answer, and that the answer is soluble. For me, that's the beauty of mathematics and it's application to absolutely everything.

From a cryptographic perspective I love making up codes and then giving them to a friend who's also a mathematical type to see if he can break them