Strange obsessions

Stuart333 said:

Now I am not sure how I can go away or have a holiday.

I organise a lot of my life around getting in my steps target for the day. I set myself a low target of 6,000 and I haven't missed it in 6.5 years. This involves a lot of pacing up and down inside the house on rainy days (even once with a slipped disc). I read while I pace, so it's not really wasted time. I also did 10,000 steps for 1,000 consecutive days and 11,000 steps for 366 consecutive days. Why? I haven't got a clue. But once I started, I found it hard to stop. I think I just like numbers and counting things. It's also probably a stim that I didn't recognise as such until recently.

Lotus said:

" I think, therefore I am" - perhaps Descartes was on the spectrum?

Or maybe for us it's, "I am, therefore I think."

Stuart333 said:

Now I am not sure how I can go away or have a holiday

This made me chuckle. Why would you want to go away on holiday, where everything is different and you can't indulge in your special interests or obsessions?

I really get obsessing over weather data. I always check the forecast every day, not just if its going to rain or be sunny but min & max temperatures, wind speed & direction and humidity. I can't understand why most other people aren't interested in all that data and the small talk about weather goes no further than its hot/cold/rainy/very windy/muggy today, isn't it? - expected answer, "yeah", or "it's going to be hot/cold/rainy/very windy/muggy tomorrow/at the weekend" - full stop. I think it's because NTs think about weather in terms of how it might affect what social activities they want to do, while we enjoy a dive into the data.

I like to record the max and min temps along with the rainfall each day in my garden. If I miss one it pains me. I used to watch it but not record it, but since covid I have every day.

Now I am not sure how I can go away or have a holiday. Not sure if this counts.

I used to like cars so subscribed to some car magazines. I have not opened more than a handful of them in the last 20 years. They are in large piles. I need to cancel them and throw them away but I can't bring myself to do it. I guess this is a bit strange.

I was reasonably pleased with the finished result. I went into hyper-obsessive mode while doing it, though. It gets things done, I suppose.

Impressive - that sounds like a really satisfying exercise.

My 'icon' here is an image of the Byzantine Emperor John II Komnenos (ruled 1118-1143). The original is from a mosaic in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. When the cathedral was converted into a mosque, after the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans, the face of John II was damaged. One of his eyes, his nose and mouth were destroyed. I digitally replaced them, almost pixel by pixel, to the best of my ability, and uploaded the result to Wikimedia Commons, under my Wikipedia pseudonym. It can be seen in the Wikipedia article on John II.

I've just been thinking about our obsessions a bit more, and I feel that maybe this is a major difference between us and NTs - they do stuff, like going to the pub with friends, we think about stuff, like whether you can have two first names and two surnames that include all the letters of the alphabet, or the penetration depths of armour piercing shells, or how our society's rules were created.

I believe It also feeds into our communication problems, because when a colleague or acquaintance asks what you did at the weekend, they are not usually interested in hearing that you researched about aliens, or the history of religions, or AI, or whatever your latest obsession is. They expect you to say "I went away for the weekend, I went out for a coffee with a friend, I went out for dinner with my partner, I went to the cinema/a party/ a concert/watched football, etc. You can't think about stuff properly in those social situations.

" I think, therefore I am" - perhaps Descartes was on the spectrum?

I read the occasional book on numbers and maths. I get all excited by things like "perfect numbers" and "sublime numbers" and the like. I'd love to infodump about them to people, but at my age I know better. I'd only get as far as "num..." before their eyes would glaze over. There was no shutting me up as a kid, though.

I also like changing the volume on the TV to a prime number. Why set it to 30 when you can set it to 31? I like to live life large like that—you know, out there on the edge. I'm a bit of a rebel.

I like numbers as well as letters, and my mind is drawn to patterns. It's probably why I spent many years of my working life in accounting roles, despite - like you - not being good at higher level mathematics. I love a spreadsheet, but I also like word games such as Scrabble and I'm also a qualified teacher of English as a second language.

I don’t play computer games, apart from Sudoku, Wordle and occasionally chess, but I understand your compulsion to complete all the letters of the alphabet within the names.

I might have the numeral version of your games obsession as I have spent my lifetime engaged in mental counting and mental arithmetic. The predictability of numbers makes it extremely satisfying, yet higher level mathematics has eluded me.

Thanks for the reply, you've explained it very well!

I love the names. Kudos for not taking the easy way out and using the conventional "AA", "AB", "AC" approach to extending the naming. Your way is much better.

I get obsessed by small things all the time. I have to figure out a problem, or learn something new, or arrange something, or find a pattern and I cannot rest until I do. Then I move on and forget all about it. For example, I spent a day researching the penetration depths of armour-piercing shells used by tanks in WW2. It just seemed like it had to be done. Did I remember the details? Not really, no. Did that bother me? One day a few years later it did, so I did the research all over again (I don't keep notes, I like to "live in the moment"). Do I now remember the details? No, they're gone again. It's not really the retention of the facts that I'm after, it's more the process and feeling of discovering them.