I Don’t Know How to Like Things Casually

Surprisingly, my first obsession wasn't dogs.

Everyone would assume it was, but I was actually terrified of dogs as a child. Before they eventually took over my entire personality, there were horses.

Almost every afternoon after school, I would put on the same DVD, Il Cavallo, and watch it from beginning to end. I could recite entire sections by heart. If you had asked seven-year-old me about different horse breeds, she would have answered with alarming confidence.

Unfortunately, horses were only the beginning.

I have been through a lot of obsessions over the years. Some never really went away, they just became less... intense.

If you knew me in high school, this won't come as a surprise: K-pop was a pretty big one. I have an NCT tattoo, for fuck's sake. I probably could have told you what Baekhyun had for breakfast. These days I just enjoy the music and watch the occasional variety show like a normal person.

Others come and go. Reading, for example, has been part of my life for as long as I can remember, but every now and then it completely takes over. I'll start a book at home and get so invested that being away from the story for eight hours feels impossible. The next day, I'll have the audiobook playing while I work.The most agonizing part of those days is the drive with my sister, because I am forced to do the unimaginable: live in reality and talk to her.

Some obsessions don't last very long. People close to me will remember the period of my life when my daily schedule revolved around a jar of flour and water.

My sourdough starter had to be fed at specific times, kept at roughly 28°C, and protected from drafts and humidity like it was a Victorian child recovering from tuberculosis. The funniest part is that I don't even like bread like that. When it died, I mourned it for approximately twenty-four hours before moving on to the next phase of my life.

Of course, not all my obsessions are quite so ridiculous.

There was the period when I became obsessed with US war crimes (we are, unfortunately for everyone around me, still somewhat in that period). It started with me watching a few documentaries about the Vietnam War and somehow ended with me reading everything I could find by Seymour Hersh and subscribing to his Substack.

Speaking of current obsessions, I guess we have to talk about this blog.

I’ve always liked writing (mainly journaling and writing The Vamps fanfiction), but I’ve never taken it quite to this extreme. And I’m not talking about simply making a website. I’m talking about the ridiculous amount of preparation and planning that goes into each of these shitty little posts.

You guys should see the spreadsheet. I have deadlines. I have a task table with different priority levels like this is Vogue or something.

You might be thinking: “Well, intense, sure, but I don't really see the problem.”

Well... I do, actually. For starters, sometimes I get so immersed in something that I completely lose track of everything else. Including basic human needs, like eating.

Not in a “haha, I’m so skinny” way. More like: I start a book in the morning, spend the entire day reading until I suddenly realize I haven't eaten all day, and then I need to make pasta with pesto because it is the fastest, lowest-effort meal I can make before I actually collapse. (Yes, this has happened more than once.)

Or there was the time I watched all twenty-five episodes of Boys Over Flowers without really leaving my bed. I only remember one interruption: going to the bathroom. Obviously, I took my laptop with me because I could not be parted from Lee Minho for even a few minutes. My great-aunt Carmelina was asleep in the next room, and I was trying to be as silent as possible.

Which, looking back, was completely unnecessary because she used to snore so loudly that she probably would not have noticed if I had brought a whole cinema into the bathroom.

I miss you, zia.

The other problem is that I genuinely cannot stop thinking about my current obsession. It gets to the point where I find it difficult to focus on conversations because my brain is just screaming: ABU GHRAIB! MY LAI! ROBERT MCNAMARA! DICK CHENEY!

Meanwhile, someone is asking me for relationship advice, and I’m having to actively fight the urge to somehow bring up US foreign policy. Or even worse, sometimes my obsession is vaguely related to the conversation, which creates a whole internal debate: how much information can I reasonably share before people decide they have heard enough? (The answer is probably less than I think. They would never tell me though.)

But it’s not all bad. The incredible rush I get from finding that one topic I can completely disappear into makes it all worth it.

There is a very specific period at the beginning of every obsession when all the algorithms seem to align: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Substack, everything starts feeding me exactly what I want. My entire world becomes this tiny little corner of knowledge, and I am unstoppable in my quest to find out everything there is to know.

And honestly, that is when I am the happiest.

Fortunately, I have friends who are willing to listen to me talk about whatever my current obsession is. And if they ever get tired of it, well, now I have this blog.

I know this is probably not the healthiest way to cultivate hobbies, and I am trying to get better at finding a balance. But I don’t actually want to become someone who enjoys things in moderation. That sounds boring.

I just want to learn how to be obsessed without letting the obsession take over my entire life.

Anyway, I'm working on it.

At least I don't do drugs! Kidding, I also do that.