What is the weirdest special interest you've had?

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Is your special interest "productive" or "purposeful"?

Do you gain knowledge with your special interest? Does it involve practicing a skill? Is it a hobby? Is it FUN?

Or is it none of the above?

And finally, what is the WEIRDEST special interest you've had?

I think my most weird and unproductive hobby was slinkies. I collected metal and plastic slinkies obsessively for over a year. Little ones, round, in the shapes of moons and starts, rainbow hues, plain colors, glitter . . . i think you get the picture.

I lost them when I had to move from calif. Could not carry much with me when I left. <,< >.> oh well.

As for my current obsession "drawing". I think its productive and that it teaches me. It soothes me too. Helps me understand things sometimes.

Atm it's running which is kind of good since it helps with stress and anxiety. My 'main' interest is fairy tales which I've had since I was little and that's useful coz it helped with my uni work. A lot of people think it's weird though because I'm 25.

My uncle bought me a handheld LCD game called Puyolin for Christmas one year. I became completely obsessed with it. Especially the timed game. Get as many points as you could in 3 minutes. I got up to 360,000(when the game scored 20 points for a simple 4 puyo match and 1,200 for a chain of 2). I only quit when the game started to malfunction and ran out of battery power. Several hours a day for 2 years to beat a game no one else played/cared about.

Usually (the last 40 years) my projects have been musical or literary or both (music criticism). I toiled the avant garde and made my footnote in history. I am currently published by Perfect Sound Forever. My 1st record is presently receiving reissue so I suppose recognition finally arrived. Purpose might be too strong a term. I have mixed feelings about spending so much of my life engaged in nonprofessional pursuits which led me to a decidedly déclassé existence. But, nevertheless it has been the life that was customized for me. There are so many roads I could have but didn't take along the way.

In between, I was engaged in 2 particular projects way outside my familiar haunts. One was a communist phase, reading and debating Marxist-Leninist material, studying the Soviet Union and even becoming a card-carrying member of the CPUSA. That antagonized my trust-fund yuppie wife to no end, and, ultimately, I question the worth of all the learning. Then I had a transgendered phase. MtF and I lived, legally, as a woman for a year in California. That special interest ended my marriage and severely jeopardized my economic security. It was an interesting experience and I suppose I have come out better for it, but the cost was high.

Mine is purposeful and I use it every day. I am into cars and can pretty much do whatever I need to in order to fix one or customize it to my needs. I do everything from engines and transmissions to welding up rust holes and all my own paint and body work too. I even do my own wiring and am trying to learn how to do upholstery. Needless to say I have had other obsessions within the automotive sphere including hypermiling, drag racing and the cars of the former Soviet block (GAZ, UAZ, IZH, ZAZ, Trabant, Lada, Zastava, FSO, etc.)

I have obsessed over weirder things though, like nuclear war and cold war civil defense shelters. I've even done a little bit of "prepping", like putting away some canned goods and trying to grow a garden. It turns out that gardening is a lot harder than it looks. Sadly, my garden died before I could get much of a harvest. I am probably going to try again this fall so that I can learn from my mistakes.

So yes, my special interests have been quite boring and practical. This is probably because I tend to be boring and practical and generally try to learn things that make me more self sufficient.

Memorizing country flags since my childhood. I do not know if it is weird or not (I guess it is), however it seems pretty useless. After all, who cares about the flag of Sri Lanka? (No offence meant)

I also have updated my knowledge recently, so it can be said that this is still an obsession for me.

The strangest one for me would have to be the fiber optic ornaments...or rather, the wires inside the ornaments. I've already purchased a few of the ornaments I've come across and proceeded to bring them home and carefuly smash them to bits with a hammer so that I could extract the fiber optic wires. I've bundled them together in little bunches and...yeah, you probably dont want to hear me go on and on about all that.

Yeah, anyway, thats probably my strangest so far and it is...ongoing. Not practical in any way whatsoever.

Is your special interest "productive" or "purposeful"?
Most of them are not directly productive, but my interests in regards to foreign languages and cultures/religions have proven to be quite useful.

Do you gain knowledge with your special interest?
Does it involve practicing a skill? Is it a hobby? Is it FUN? I'd say all my interests involve practicing various skills and can be considered hobbies as well.


What is the WEIRDEST special interest you've had?
I'd say the study of taphonomy and my fascination and knowledge of heavy weapons are among the more unusual interests (the former moreso than the latter).

car numberplates

Think most of mine have been a little different.

Ninjutsu: Have done varying amounts in Bujinkan, Genbukan, Ashida Kim's Hai Lung, and Kevin Hawthorn's Ninjutsu.

Religion: Bible College. 2nd degree in a Wiccan coven. Membership in a Druid org.

Weirdest one was probably my version of "scrapbooking," which involved no artistry, but simply keeping every receipt, straw wrapper, etc. and pasting them into a spiral bound notebook. Luckily this didn't last long.

Another one that was not really weird but was the least productive and perhaps actually destructive was my special interest in overseas travel when I was a teenager. I had no resources that allowed me to actually engage in this interest and it was maddening because my special interests were a lot more intense back then. Since then I'm lucky that most of the interests I've had have been things to do with books and computers, which have no obstacles to me pursuing them.

My current one is more or less productive because I've decided to make a career of it (teaching medieval literature at the college level) so it will likely support me for the rest of my life, if all goes well.

I have 2 special interests that I seem to go back and forth between. They are science (mostly biology and chemistry but a little physics) and serial killers.
The science interest is very productive and I'm lucky enough to study it at uni so that is great for me

The serial killer interest is probably the 'weirdest' interest I have. I currently have over 200 true crime/serial killer books, I generally only tell my certain people about this interest as some people find it quite odd.

Yes I have been described as scary aswell, people say my eyes are beautiful but scary at the same time (I don't understand that!)

In school my teachers asked me to maybe bring different books into school to read as I would bring my serial killer books in and read them to avoid a meltdown.

It's good to talk to someone who understands this interest