Of late, the things that interest me the most — in no particular order — are collecting, watching, and writing about supernatural horror movies; learning Sharepoint, an amazingly deep Microsoft evolution of the old, crappy FrontPage; certain facets of Nashville web design and development, namely CSS (cascading style sheets) and Nashville SEO/SEM (search engine optimization/marketing); and finally, hiking and photography at Nashville’s Radnor Lake.

I am constantly getting sidetracked and going off on tangents in various areas, and it sometimes leads to a real enthrallment. And occasionally one of these novel enthrallments of mine will mark the beginning of a new phase or a major kick in my life. Anyone who knows me well can tell you that I have a highly addictive personality, together with more than a hint of obsessive and compulsive type behavior. In other words, when I get into something, man, do I get into it.

Take anime, for instance. When I watched my first anime DVD in August 2008, it started something no one saw coming, nor could anyone possibly have predicted it: an amazing — or unfortunate, depending on your viewpoint – immersion into anime! From September through December 2008, I spent more money and time than I even knew I had on anime DVDs. I had a blast, at the time; I developed quite a lot of knowledge about anime, a large DVD collection quickly took up space on my shelves, and an otaku website was born. But just a few days after I started the Otaku at 42 anime website, my obsession with it reached critical mass and I was suddenly and completely burned out on anime.

Speaking of going off on tangents and getting sidetracked, here I go again! It often happens when I write, so I must take care to stay on point.

I believe most creative, intelligent, curious people probably wonder about more things during the course of a day than even they themselves would believe; most of them are probably only fleeting thoughts, such as “ I wonder how she comes up with that,” “How did he know that,” “Where do they learn to . . .” and so on ad infinitum. They are soon forgotten.

Today I had the bright idea to try to document some of these things in a post I might call, Things I Found Interesting on [enter date here]. Granted, I hope I come up with a much more catchy and creative name than Things I Found Interesting, but nevertheless. . .a new blog topic is born.

But it isn’t new; and a fresh blog topic is NOT born, for it’s exactly what I had in mind when I decided to start this blog. The name captures it perfectly: Assorted Enthrallments.