Obsession's Greatest Hits

I've just been thinking about a few things I have pursued that have bordered on obsessions at various times, without much elaboration except to say -- when I get obsessed with something, I really get obsessed. This list is semi-chronological and certainly incomplete:

1. Space and other flight (as a kid)
2. Model building (airplanes and spacecraft, as a kid)
3. Flying (Civil Air Patrol, as a kid)
4. Basketball (briefly, in high school)
5. Music (guitar, songwriting, recording, in college)
6. Languages (French, Russian, Japanese)
7. Physics
8. Optics (a good one, pays the bills!)
9. Flight simulators
10. Flying (flight lessons, private pilot)
11. Music again (songwriting, recording, my first CD)
12. Space again (Orbiter simulator)

There are worse things to be obsessed with, I suppose. Notably missing: TV and sports since high school. It's kind of odd that I've "regressed" back to the first obsession I really remember (space). John Glenn must have made some impression on that 8 year old boy!

And I forgot what has to be the biggest obsession of all -- books! Every other obsession was accompanied by a steady stream of them -- shelves and boxes are still crammed with books on Japanese, flying, space, flight sims, songwriting, SF, WWII history, Mozart, and whatever else. A few die-cast model airplanes too (nostalgia for the models but no time to build). And if anything, the web has fed the book addiction. I am an Amazonaholic...