A series of obsessions.

It seems like my life has become a series of obsessions. This isn't a healthy way to go about things. Could be a band, a political or economic ideology, and unfortunately sometimes it's a person - not that I'd ever harm anyone, I just tend to think about one specific thing constantly.

One thing that stands out was playing music. When we first starting playing live music, and if I thought we had a good gig (I'd probably be frightened to hear it now - as we've improved), after the gig I'd find myself pacing around in my own bedroom, with my mind racing, recapturing moments that I thought were great. This might go on for an hour or so. If you were standing outside my bedroom you'd probably hear me laugh to myself or dance around. My dad would do this sometimes about various shit. "Stop talking to yourself", we would say. This is what we thought was normal.

One I remember as a child was a pair of sneakers that I needed. These were the Nike Air Cross Trainers (this was maybe around '87-'88). It was tough to find kid's sizes around and I called every store. I think I waited seven months until I found out a local Foot Locker had them. With the acquisition of the shoes, the obsession soon faded.

When I first discovered that 9/11 was an inside that would be all I would talk about. This was ideal for drunken bar room situations. Preferably during heavy drinking. I've provoked shouting matches over it before. In hindsight, this was far from any sort of healthy approach to the topic, but it provided me with great amusement/entertainment. Try it sometime. I'm still of the belief that 9/11 was an inside job. Anyone with a brain who looks into building 7 could see something not right happened.

A couple years ago I had a mild obsession about making homemade pizza that paid off pretty well. I'd purchased a pizza stone and a peel and seriously got into making dough. My housemates were quite tolerant of me destroying the kitchen with flour and olive oil. I tried various conventional and unconventional techniques for dough and got pretty comfortable with sliding the pizza on and off the stone.  I found this to be quite rewarding and maybe even healthy. Of course, me being the insecure competition freak (not just satisfied with making good pizza), I had to turn the thing into a competition among friends. Which I've always won. And the competition was pretty stiff too. I don't make pizza all that much anymore unless it's for competition.

These are just a few harmless examples, I could add more, but I won't. While these are somewhat safe fixations, it would be nice to obsess over positive things, like being healthy, making lots of money, and helping my neighbors. I'm pretty sure those obsessions would make me feel good inside but I'm just not there yet and I don't know if I'll ever be. Unfortunately I'm more of an instant gratification guy...ya know, like the animals or children.

yours truly,
dB