February 20, 2004

Obsessions

It's weird how I never really picked up on how truly obsessive my personality is, until a few weeks ago, when I was cleaning up my room, and happened upon some relics from bygone years. I mean, I've been accused jokingly of being obsessive-compulsive by almost everyone who knows me at one point or another, from my family, to my friends, to my acquaintances, to random people who don't even really know me. But I always played that off as a joke. Guess the joke was on me.

When I say obsessive, I don't mean like obsessive in that scary, stalker way where I spend every waking hour thinking about that random woman I saw that one day at the supermarket. Quite the opposite, because I don't really obsess over people at all. Instead, I tend to obsess over things - activities, ideas, possibilities, hobbies. I guess that this sort of obsession would not be such a bad thing, if it were not for its fleeting, transient nature. But inevitably my obsessions are just that - temporary fancies dropped like hot potatoes as soon as the novelty wears off. And now, looking through all the crap I have accumulated in the last seven or eight years, it's rather disheartening.

In ninth grade, there was my guitar fancy. I wanted to learn classical guitar. I bought an accoustic. I spent two years learning classical songs. But to be good required practice, and I wasn't interested. I stopped trying and eventually stopped taking lessons. Then there was my rock phase, where I wanted to play hardcore electric guitar. So I went out and bought one of those, and an amp, and a strap, and I started taking lessons again. But pretty soon, I realized that I didn't like any of the songs I was learning to play. I didn't even like rock music that much anymore - I had moved onto hardcore rap. Two more years and lesson fees down the drain. So here I was with two guitars (which are still there, collecting dust in my room in Irvine) and nothing accomplished. I doubt I could strum two chords today, and it's only been 4 years.

Then came my next big obsession - downloading, in 10th grade. Think pre-Napster era, where downloading was still novel. I became obsessed with IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and spent hours learning all there was to know about "the scene." From top sites to telesyncs, and from release groups to RARs, I spent the better part of that year acquiring a vast library of movies and music, which I errantly came across while cleaning my room, all neatly organized in a few CaseLogic binders, untouched for the last three years. Whatever became of that obsession and all those hours invested? Nothing was gained.

Of course, I can't forget one of my greatest obsessions that continues to reign strong even today: X-Files. I spent years videotaping, watching, and editing every episode there was. Every damn one. When I was at home this winter, my dad asked me what I wanted to do with all those tapes, now that I owned the DVD collection. How many wasted hours and days went into that useless project? I shudder to even think about it. And my past is full of countless more examples of the very same thing: egregious obsession and thoughtless abandonment. Hundreds of forks, u-turns, and dead ends. And what's the only thing worse than identifying a problem in hindsight? The potential for the problem to go unresolved into the future.

How many of the things I'm into now are just evanescent inclinations destined for unceremonious desertation? Am I really into open source, literature, travel, and photography, or are these supposed interests yet more stepping stones to the powerful pillar of Pretension? Worse yet, am I just one of those people who moves from one trendy activity to another, secure in my apathy and content in my moderate disinterest of everything around me? I certainly hope not. For if I get so easily bored by my hobbies, how long will it be before I turn to people to satiate my obsessive desire for novelty?

Reading over what I've just wrote, I realize that it's rather intensely introspective - perhaps unnecessarily so. However, given all the whining recently from people complaining about how I need to move beyond indelible rants, I think this serves as a nice entry to break the routine. Plus, this is a blog and what are blogs for but lame, amateurish psycho-babble, right? I sincerely apologize if I have disappointed you, dear reader, but realize that I'm just not angry right now - I've got bigger fish to fry. And seriously, how much can you hate on bums before it gets kind of old?