(Or – Do We Really Need Our Obsessions?)
I collect books. And music. And film cuttings. And anything even remotely nostalgic. And Photos. I’ve even tried to collect together my memories. All of them. (If I ever do, I won’t be the first – check out the fascinating I Remember by Joe Brainard.)
As soon as I’ve got a collection of anything, though, I want to catalogue it. And that’s a whole different box of crazy. Because a catalogue has to be perfect or what’s the point of it? Never mind that the chances of me, or anyone else, re-visiting the catalogue are slim at best.
Not all of these obsessions are fulfilled, of course, I haven’t got the time. Some of the catalogues are days and days of work. I have 31,000 photos on my phone and the thought of organising it all makes me feel unwell. But the obsessive bit of my brain keeps reminding me I haven’t done it, so that I’m perpetually unsettled by a thing no one but myself is making me do.
I keep a list of everything I’ve watched on Netflix. And Amazon Prime. And Now TV. Not three different lists, you understand, just the one – I mean three would be weird, right? I keep lists of everything. I’ve got a hand-written packing list, an app that records my reading habits, and if I could stop time while I did it, I’d probably journal my entire existence. (Welcome to my blog!)
But it’s not just collecting and recording data - I can’t enter the kitchen without putting the radio on. I can’t pack a storage box without taking everything out half a dozen times in order to utilise every, square centimetre of space. I can’t watch anything on TV without needing to check where I’ve previously seen every actor who looks familiar, thus meaning I miss valuable plot and have to go back and rewatch it again.
Oh, and if coffee isn’t one of the first things that happens every day, well, I’m going to set things on fire, you see if I don’t. (But, as we all know, coffee’s not an obsession, it’s the elixir of life.)
If I don’t do any of that stuff, do you know what happens? Nothing at all...
...Nothing, except my existential meltdown and a feeling the world will not work properly from this point on. None of it matters to anyone but me. But why? Why the need to put pressure on myself with things, that in the greater scheme of things, don’t really matter?
Some of it's dopamine, I think, isn’t it? Complete a list of books or films and there’s a dopamine-filled moment of accomplishment. Like when you Crush the Candy or poke a Pokémon or make the Angry Birds chuck things at pigs. It’s all meaningless twaddle, of course, but at three in the morning it’s still worth another go, don't you think?
Just. One. More. Go.
With the Euro having taken a lot of the fun out of coin collecting, and stamps being printable at home, I wonder what those old-school obsessives do these days with their time?
Full disclosure: I have a small box of foreign coins that I never ‘collected’ but held onto because, as a child, I thought maybe I might want to one day – pre-collecting collecting if you like.
Fuller disclosure: I have a large, wholesale sized crisp box filled with stamps upstairs at my Dad’s. I always thought they might be worth something. They might be, yet I’ve no plan to find out any time soon. I don't know why I’m not throwing them away. But I’m not.
Some obsessions we might try and pass off as ‘hobbies’, even though we know we’re not fooling anybody. Obsessions get under our skin, they can ruin our lives, they can make us ill.
Which is why I say - thank heavens for the good old-fashioned trainspotters. Aside from the unending strike action and the generally awful service, the trains are still running and the spotters are still spotting them.
In the old days trainspotters were solitary chaps with a pad and pencil into which they would scribble whatever trainspotters scribble. Not anymore. Now they run in packs. Well, not run, obviously, being a train spotter is all about standing for long periods of time, seemingly doing nothing. Like cricket umpires. But with tripods and cameras and butties in a lunchbox.
I worked on a West End show where the same woman came to the weekday matinee every single week. For years. And years. And years. The same show. She may even have booked the same seat. She spent tens of thousands of pounds. There’s no way she got something new out of it each time. But on a Thursday afternoon, she'd be there.
So, whether it’s football or fishing or the news or Love Island or jogging or DIY or jigsaws or religion or shopping or screaming at strangers on Twitter, we’re all obsessed with something.
Kids are obsessed with different things every few months. My youngest has been obsessed with (in no particular order) countries of the world and their flags (he still knows all 190-odd of them); planets and the solar system; Thomas The Tank Engine and all the collectable figures; The Cars movies and all the collectable figures; Five Nights At Freddie’s and (all together now…) all the collectable figures. Grocery Gang, The Trash Pack, Comic Relief Red Noses - in fact, let’s just say any plastic collectable stuff. Literally. Then there’s been Pokémon, Geocaching, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, Roblox and YouTube (all of it). He’s 12!!
Other people’s obsessions are ridiculous, aren’t they? Just as ours are to them, I suppose.
So why do we have them? Maybe we need them? Apart from, of course, the ones that hurt us or others: out of control gambling, abuse of addictive substances, I’m A Celebrity… etc.
I mean, without them, where would be? We’d be staring at blank screens on our phones and TVs. We’d be collecting nothing, staring at empty shelves wondering what they were for. Or standing on train platforms… with no purpose at all. (Hang on, isn’t that exactly what..?) Weekends would be meaningless, places of worship and cheering in club colours would be redundant.
We’d have to talk to each other! What sort of a world would that be to live in?
I mean, if we’re going to hang around pointlessly mumbling to like-minded individuals, I mean, we might as well congregate in bland and boring places and compare notes about whatever we’ve seen and are hoping to see – like the 12.17pm from Tamworth to Euston train. Oh, hang on…
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