Can a Little Obsessiveness Be Useful?

[Ed note: This post relates to photography, I promise. It is not about what it seems to be about at the beginning! As you must often do on TOP, hang in there.]

For some strange reason I suddenly seem to own about 17 more cheap ballpoint pens than I did a week ago. How did that happen? Many are duplicates, because you're forced by the packaging to buy two, three, five, or a dozen pens in order to try just one. It's been interesting. I'm coming around to liking gel pens more and more, and I made at least one self-discovery: with the new instant-drying inks, I can write with the heel of my hand resting on the paper and thus on the desk as I write, without smudging the ink on what I've just written. All my life I've written with just the knuckle of my pinkie on the paper and the rest of my hand suspended above it, to avoid smudges. (I'm a leftie.) I wish I could say that this new discovery instantly improved my handwriting, but it did not; instead, it immediately gave me cramps due to the new and unfamiliar position of my hand.

But enough about pens. I'm going to admit here that I think I suffer from mild obsessiveness—and that's the subject here. [CORRECTION: At the suggestion of Aaron in the Comments, I'm going to change some of the instances of "obsession" in this article to "fixation"—"a strong, perhaps excessive, interest in something, not necessarily negative."] This pen thing is not OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) despite the everyday currency of that expression. I used to think I had OCD, but then I read a book about real OCD, and—oh my, do I ever not have it. Saying you have OCD when you're temporarily perseverating or fixating on an interest is like saying "I'm starving" when you're a little peckish or "I'm so depressed" when you're feeling a bit on the low side. No, no, and no. In common usage, used casually and non-technically, these are intensifiers. Intensifiers, like the way we have a hundred exaggerated ways to say "good," are an all-too-human tendency in speech—emphasis by overstatement. A recently popular intensifier for "good" in American English is "insane." I have a general rule not to amplify ordinary "dislike" into "hate"—a common intensifier—but I have to say, I hate that one.

But yeah, a little fixated. I'd say I'm going to quit buying and trying pens, but maybe after the six that are en route as I write this get here. Heh!

Settle down, Mike.

Here's the thing, though: I've long been aware that I've put my obsessiveness, or whatever you want to call it—"excessive focus"? "Unhealthy preoccupation"?—to good use. For instance: I never could have kept up my interest in photography for so long if it were just a casual, superficial source of interest and pleasure. And I never would have been able to write a more-or-less daily blog for twenty years if I hadn't been more than a little bit excessively focused or unhealthily preoccupied.

For instance, I re-wrote Tuesday's post on Wednesday morning, adding several hundred new words and an illustration. Why? Because it's the way I am. And in that post, I mentioned that Richard Nickel died documenting Chicago buildings that were being torn down (I have not one but two magnificent books of his I never look at—who can stop at one?—both notated by Amazon as "Purchased Jan 2011"). And Jamie Livingston's PAD project was only ended by his death. How could they possibly have kept those activities going if they weren't in some sense obsessions? Sometimes, I think I see signs, in others, that fixations really are rising to the level of OCD. I could name two examples I know of—one a stereo guru and one a coffee nut—but it would risk insulting real people in public and I'm unwilling to do that.

Cavemen and -women
I've always thought that subject specialization is an innate instinct of the mind, because the primordial tribe in the ancestral environment, ten thousand years ago, needed specialists. One guy is great at chipping rocks into sharp edges; he makes the tools. A woman knows all about turning animal hides into robes. Someone else teaches the children. There's the medicine man, who plays the placebo effect for all it's worth and knows how to comfort the sick and dying. Another guy is the best tracker. Another has a knack for leadership; another is strong, competitive, and a psychopath, and feels no fear in battle nor much compunction about killing the group's enemies. (The Sioux in their natural state had separate chiefs for peacetime and wartime. The UK did that in WWII, letting Churchill be their war leader but booting him out as soon as the war was over.) All these tribal specialists are needed. In an evolutionary-biological sense, that's why modern society has grown-up men who are fixated on NFL football or the Marvel Universe, chefs, Jay Leno, the guy who made the biggest ball of string, serial killers, and a guy I met when I worked for Model Railroader who had turned the whole second floor of his house into a giant HO train layout and organized every aspect of his life around model railroading. (When she came to the door, his cheery wife—clearly a victim of Stockholm Syndrome—was wearing an engineer's hat and striped denim overalls like an old-timey engineer. Instead of "come in," she opened the door wide and said, "all aboard!")

And what of my interest in photography? Not truly obsessive, I suppose, by the clinical definitions. But it's also not normal or balanced in the usual sense. I've been into it for most of my life. I've "harnessed" my naturally fixating or obsessive nature in the service of that interest and involvement, you might say, and put it to good use. If you can turn it to good use, a little obsession helps. It helps you get the work done.

The biggest change in my involvement with photography that's happened over the past handful of years is that this longtime preoccupation or fixation has begun to subside. More and more sub-topics bore me now. It's harder to get excited; I've seen it all before. Over the years I've witnessed several friends and acquaintances "emerge" from formerly vigorous fixations. I knew an audio equipment importer once, for example, who had followed his audiophilia to extreme lengths. He eventually simply tired of it all. He stopped chasing perfection, de-accessioned everything except a small but high-quality system that was not very expensive by his standards, and settled down to listening to music.

The moving ballpoint, having writ, moves on
As for the cheap ballpoints, well...they're all just pens. Yes, I'm "looking into it" at the moment—demystifying the subject, to use Oren Grad's term. I did the same thing with quartz watches a few years back, and came away with one watch I really like and wear every day. I did the same thing with shaving a while back, and settled on a simple routine that satisfies me. I did it with keyboards, trying your patience in the process, and ended up coming back around to the current version of what I've always used. (I had a wiring problem—I couldn't rewire my mind and my hand-eye co-ordination.) I'll do the same thing with ballpoints I'm sure. I'll learn about it for a while, settle on one or two products I like best, and that will be that. That's not obsession even in the colloquial sense. It's just "buying-and-trying"—a somewhat more involved version of shopping.

I'll leave it behind. I'll bet money that if you ask me a year from now, months and months will have gone by without me buying a single new pen. It's not going to remain an interest.

Not that there's anything wrong with it if it did. To each their own. But for me, these little shopping interests come and go; they're fun, because I like learning, and I like trying things for myself. Obsession, however—that's on another level altogether.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Jeff Sprang: "Interesting take on obsession. My experience with a model railroader's wife was completely different. On assignment to cover the guy who had converted his entire basement into a model railroad layout, I was greeted at the door of the home by his spouse who waved towards the basement door with a curt 'he's down there' and went back to reading her romance novel. Did another photo story on a guy who restored old Silver King tractors. His very nice ranch style house had been taken over completely by parts and tools. He cheerily told me that his wife with the kids had left him over it, like that was a good thing—to him it apparently was."

Rob de Loe: "There's a nice intersection between this post about obsessions, and your previous post that focused a lot on projects. To do a big project well, I think you have to be a bit obsessed because you may need to work at it beyond the point of common sense. I know when I've reached that stage when I'm obsessing about things that I know with certainty that nobody else will notice or care about. As a side note, my answer to the question someone asked, 'How do you know when the project is done?' is, "Big projects are never finished—only abandoned.'"

MikeR: "I'm glad you wrote that about OCD. My firsthand experience with true OCD came from living with it, embodied by my late first wife. It is a sad and horrifying thing to witness, as though a person has been possessed. Not even remotely funny, the way it's been depicted in Monk and As Good As It Gets. And by the way, I've seen a Venn diagram that illustrates an overlap among OCD, ADHD, and Autism. I think obsession is too strong a word for what you describe. But, it's more than curious, or interested. Open to suggestions."

Mike replies: I modified the post slightly to include the word "fixation." I wonder if that serves a little better.

Tony: "Sometimes obsessiveness can definitely be useful in photography; there’s a bunch of prints I have lying around that couldn’t have been possible without me going all-in on learning the ins, outs, and quirks of my system of choice. However, my current obsession is flash bulbs—a particularly expensive and insane thing to be diving into in the 2020s—and while I’ve had some successes that couldn’t really have been done with electronic flash, the jury is still out whether this obsession is going to be worth the hours of research and testing I’ve already sunk into it!"

Stuart Hamilton: "The late Kurt Stier, a brotherly friend for 60 years and a professional photographer through the annual reports years, worked in his early photo career as an assistant and darkroom printer for Irving Penn. He once told me, quoting Penn, that nothing great is ever achieved without obsession."

Sean: "People who say they're a little bit OCD will be cured by reading David Adam's The Man Who Couldn't Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought."

Moose:

"Pens In Mug (mug by high school art student.)"

David Comdico: "Scorsese has said, paraphrasing a bit, that Art is making other people care about your obsessions."

David Dyer-Bennet: "The study of psychology seems to have identified a lot of things that everybody does to some degree, which if done to excess can be problems. Fixations and ADD come to mind. Even bipolar disorder is a cycling between exaggerations of normal states, rather than something entirely unique. We talk about autistic people as being on a spectrum, and part of the deal is that neurotypical people are at one end of that spectrum (or towards one end; there's variety among the typical). The clinical definitions nearly all include a requirement that it interfere with functioning (caring for yourself, holding a job, maintaining relationships are all part of 'functioning'). The difference between 'focus on your professional work' and a 'fixation' is...kind of subjective, really. Not at all sure that successful professionals can reliably turn that focus on and off on demand.

"At least to some extent, we all make lemonade with the hand we have been dealt. The hands differ, and what society rewards is somewhat arbitrary, and there's also a lot of luck involved."

Eric Brody: "As a physician who spent many years training young physicians, I found that the best had a bit of obsessiveness or whatever you choose to call it; the worst were in a word, cavalier. Those who would meticulously review a chart and find what others had missed were my heroes and in my other role as a recruiter for my medical group, I sought them out and invariably they were successful. This is true so long as they also had the most important characteristic of a great physician: empathy."

Comments

[MikeR]

Is that a Canon AE next to the mug? (I de-accessioned mine years ago, otherwise I'd hold it up to compare)

[Nikon FE2. --Mike]

[Aaron]

Perhaps the use of "obsession" not only "OCD" is often an intensifier. The online version of Merriam Webster defines obsession as "a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling." Are you disturbed by your interest in pens or photography, or do you think your interest is unreasonable? My point isn't really about you, Mike, but about what role the ideas of "disturbing" and "unreasonable" play in differentiating obsession from keen and persistent interest

[Dave]

Nice pen mug, but do you have a couple layers of paper at the bottom of the mug to catch leaks? Not paper towels; those leave lint on the end of the pen. :>)

I think you've got a strongly inquisitive mind. That might explain the unfinished projects. You were interested enough to dig into numerous projects, but became disinterested after a while. The promise of the projects didn't match the reality.

I've gone through the "traditional shaving", wristwatch and fountain pen discovery process and have more than enough of each to keep me supplied for the rest of my life -- even if my life had started 10 years ago.

The only thing I would need every so often is more shaving soap. Half of my stacks of soaps are nearly empty, so at least I'm using up my big supply.

I look at the razors and fountain pens I have and think how my parents would never have bought all that. Sure, they were raising us, but they also grew up during the Depression and couldn't bring themselves to buy multiple examples of the same thing just for kicks.

"I'll bet money that if you ask me a year from now, months and months will have gone by without me buying a single new pen." Well, not if you're in the habit of misplacing pens! :>)

If your hand is cramping with your new writing style, you'll have to work at relaxing your hand and just letting the pen do the work. It should be pretty easy with the free-flowing gel inks. Sometimes it's difficult to relax your hand if the pen doesn't fit right. Too thin or too thick doesn't make for an easy writing experience.

[Richard Tugwell]

This is a bit of a diversion, but if you read between the lines you might discern some obsession/fixation.

I like pencils.... I use mechanical pencils for a lot of things, even drawing, although the choice of leads (size, hardness etc) isn't great. I studied architecture, way back in the '70s, so I inherited a certain appreciation of drawing precision.

However I also like freehand sketching so I enjoy what traditional pencils - graphite, carbon and coloured/watercolour - provide. The great thing about mechanical pencils is that they always stay the same length!

Pencils also write well upside down, as in the well touted urban myth about the Soviet and US space missions.

BTW I also have a MattBlanc LeGrand fountain pen / propelling pencil set... just for balance :-)

[Nigel Voak]

I am fascinated by mechanical pencils, and have amassed a small collection, of mostly vintage examples.

I actually use some of these pencils for work, and I guess it is just nice to have a different tool in my hand to do the daily design chores.

I just enjoy the design of these objects, and craftsmanship of some of the more high end models.

Fortunately they rarely cost me more than €50, except one esoteric British silver Yard o Led pencil made by hand in Birmingham.

Collecting things is not sensible, but I think it is a pretty harmless sort of mild addiction, that does not damage your heath like some others.

The "best" mechanical pencil in my opinion BTW is the Caran D'Ache Ecridor, indestructible after years of use, and well balanced.

I wrote this ten years ago:
https://nigelvoak.blogspot.com/2014/03/tools-of-my-trade.html

[Neven Jovanovic]

My wife works as a clown doctor. Once they had a workshop on mental disorders. As the workshop leader described the symptomes of each disorder, everybody concluded they had all the symptomes of all disorders. "True, we all have all of them", the leader said, "except for the people who are really seriously ill; they have only one, and nothing else."

[Dan Khong]

We are on the same page about gel pens. We are also on the same page that the 0.7mm tip is the sweet spot for penmanship.

Many gel pens have refills and I save by buying refills rather than throw the original away. Just sharin'.

[Stan B.]

Probably the only thing I've stuck with my whole life- since my teens. Regrets, plenty- like with most things in life... but glad I've stuck it out!

PS- Wish I had a GR back in day... Actually, a friend informed me about the film GR, but I refused to bite. Like you, I wasn't pleased with the results of the XA, and countless other small cameras I tried- they weren't as sharp as my Nikon, not as fuzzy and dreamy as a Holga- just some unhappy in between. By the time the film GR's finally rolled around, I had long given up finding the Holy Grail of tiny cameras- and the price tag sure didn't help- my loss...

[Andrew]

Your description of the model railroader’s wife is chilling.

[Joe Kashi]

The distinction between commendable effort and "fixation" or "OCD" is a matter of balance and degree.

To achieve more than a slapdash result, one must make sufficient efforts when doing something that benefits from greater effort and precision, whether editing a blog, making a photograph, making a medical diagnosis, drafting a legal brief, analyzing scientific data, etc.

These all benefit from sustained effort and refinement.

The problem arises when the total effort is substantially in excess of what's needed and efficient in a particular circumstance, does not result in any further improvement, or basically takes over one's life, a la model railroading.

We all know photographers, computer hobbyists, writers, and audiophiles, who become so engrossed in chasing technical perfection that they fail to actually do anything.

[Kye Wood]

Whatever words you use to describe it, I think it's a really bad thing. I have that predisposition. So I'm not without experience here.

It's bad because it's exclusionary. You're missing out on life while spelunking down a soon to be unimportant cave.

And it's driven by fear. Fear of making a less than perfect choice. Marketing Psychology 101.

You already have everything you need. And we're already impressed. So your imagined audience doesn't care anyway.

[Moose]

After reading only the title:

"Can a Little Obsessiveness Be Useful?"

YES

NO

Maybe

Probably

Likely not

[Chris Kern]

Mike: If you can turn it to good use, a little obsession helps. It helps you get the work done.

What would you call it when someone wants to do something as well as his or her abilities allow? Obsession, compulsion, perfectionism? What if the options change as external conditions change?

A local arts group recently issued a call for paintings or photographs of clouds. It’s not a competition—they’re just trying to fill the walls of a local public building for a few months.

So I’ve just finished spending several hours reprocessing a photo of storm clouds in New Mexico that I shot back in 2013. I did the best I could with that image at the time, but the software has improved substantially since then and so has my technique.

One of the best features of digital photography, it seems to me, is the opportunity for practitioners to take advantage of the evolution of the technology and the improvement in their ability to use the tools for exploiting it. Never being satisfied is a feature, not a bug.

[Dillan]

I wonder how many in this blog's audience are also lefties? I once worked at a bookstore, something like a Barnes and Noble, with a group of people who were all English Lit. majors, drama students, aspiring artists and musicians. We did a survey and found that just over 50% were left handed. This finding convinced me that there is something to the thought that left handed people are sometimes more creative. Your handedness is more evidence for the theory!

[Paul Van]

Wow - that hits close to home.

I've always been a little particular about what I write with. Since junior high I've mostly used Parkers for pens. In recent years, I've tried others but I mostly still come back to Parker. The exception has been a Caran d'Ache 849 ballpoint. Interestingly my preferred Parker is now an IM rollerball which is noticeably fatter than the Jotter ballpoint I used in school.

My mechanical pencil of choice these days is a Pentel Kerry.

I tried to be a fountain pen guy - I really did. But, they never really clicked with me. Too much 'can I find the right pen/ink combination?' for me to stick it out. Fortunately I figured that out before I got into expensive options. (But maybe, one of those might..... no, stop!)

I could go on, but hat's off to those who did continue their journey/fixation to find what worked for them. Now, if I can just resist the urge to dip my toes in the water to see if anything has changed....

[Peter Wright]

One of the more intriguing sentences in this post was about your declining "fixation" with photography. More and more of it is somewhat boring you say. I'm sure many of us can relate, so it would be very interesting to read some follow up thoughts on this topic, should you care to pen them (see what I did there)!

[janekr]

My "fixation" is visiting technical museums all over the world.
Of course, I'm at the very beginning, as I can afford at most 2 journeys a year.

[ASW]

Response to Dillan's comment about left-handed creatives: If you pay attention when actors or actresses write in movies or TV shows (one of my little fixations) you will note that a great many, likely >50%, are left handed.

On the larger topic here, I will note that every highly successful person I have ever known has had a moderate to high fixation on whatever subject they specialize in.

[Kent Wiley]

The most overused intensifier in current usage?

AWESOME

It's used in place of nodding your head in agreement and consequently Intensifies nothing whatsoever. Now isn't that Special?

[Jeff Hartge]

About 25 years ago, I started writing the "correct", lefty way by tilting the paper and slanting my letters opposite the traditional right-handed way. With this arrangement, your hand leads the writing across the page and does not smudge. My 4th grade teacher told me that was the proper way for a lefty to write and I ignored him for decades.
I regret having ignored him. Changing my writing tilt actually had psychological effects (very good ones).
Interestingly, almost a decade ago I got a one of the first tablet devices with a touch sensitive pen (I like to draw and wanted to use a tablet for drawing). I ended up giving up journaling with pen and paper and switched to using the tablet.
Because the writing does not smudge, I just write whatever way my hand/mind feels like that day (very often with the right-handed slant) without any negative repercussions.

[Thomas Paris]

Regarding janekr's interest in technical museums: if you've not seen it yet, Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris is wonderful.