Insomnia and Obsession

3am. I'm having another one of those sleepless nights. The wife woke me up with her nocturnal sounds, she moans, yelps, screams, mumbles, groans, talks in her sleep. Only the cats don't seem to mind, they just sleep on regardless.
My thoughts turned to the comment by Lamb about my fetish for watches. I find comments and blogging extremely stimulating. Especially around 3am . I thought to myself, I do tend to get obsessed about certain activities don't I? My earliest recollection is stumbling upon a stack of magazines with pictures of young women in bathing costumes. I was ten years old at the time. I discovered I liked beautiful women. I think this might have been an early warning sign to my future obsession with pornography. But before that, I was obsessed with bicycles. Learning to ride was the first hurdle, then that exquisite moment when it all comes together and balance becomes second nature I was hooked on cycling. Having a bicycle was handy because I needed to be mobile to get to scour all the shops for girlie magazines. Collecting them became an obsession.
I also discovered books. I always liked books and could read at an early age but it wasn't till I was sixteen that discovered the novel. I could lose myself in different world, especially the books of Jules Verne. Reading became an obsession.
Music was the next big thing. Having a record collection spanning wall to wall was a mission requiring absolute dedication. This fascination with music never went away and now I have a humongous collection of every song I ever liked in MP3 format. It was a big project, it took a lot of time and dedication and was made largely possible by Napster (RIP). I now use allofMP3 to source any new music at a very reasonable price. The collection keeps growing but at a very relaxed pace.
My obsession with art started very early. I was good at drawing in school. Learning about art in school ignited a spark. Today with the resources of the net, I have a huge collection of paintings that fascinate me. I also have a huge collection of porn thanks to the resources of the net.
Music filled my spare time for may years as I first learned to play the trumpet. I learn't to read notation. Then I took up the guitar. Learn't to play classical guitar, it was extremely painful on my back, because sitting in the Segovia recommended position for two hours a day was hard.
This led to the electric guitar, and I wonder if there are many teenage boys who actually are immune to the seduction and excitement of being a guitar player in a band.
By a sheer fluke, I found myself owning a Tascam four track recorder, an electric guitar, a bass guitar, a drum machine and a synthesizer. Wow, it was the eighties, having your own recording studio in the bedroom was even better than wanking.
I gave it all up eventually as my creative juices dried up for the PC. The first day I took home my first PC, I sat up all night mesmerized by the screensaver. I learn't slowly and painfully and with the help of friends more knowledgeable than myself, I had a fatal virus on my PC by week two.
The virus was so nasty that I needed to reset the BIOS. The cover was off and I was poking around inside the nest of wires and circuit boards like a real pro.
Strangely enough, I wasn't the type to get obsessed by games. No, I was too busy pushing the limits of Windows, which wasn't hard, crashing the system and re-installing and starting all over again. All I really wanted to do was get onto the net fast. In those days, you needed to have the skills of a techie to do that.
I forgot to mention my obsession with HiFi. Back in the seventies, everybody had to have their own system. Today it's Ipods and phones then it was speakers,turntables,amplifiers and countless of hours reading about distortion, watts, amplification, and studying sine waves.
Now I'm obsessed with my garden. Every weekend there's something to do, pruning, weeding, planting, fertilizing, mowing grass.
Oh, I nearly forgot to mention, I'm obsessed by watches and blogging.