**I was originally going to have this as a thread topic, but my original post kinda ended up too big, so I decided to make it into a blog post**

After seeing the thread about "how you fell in love with dinosaurs", it got me thinking about all the interests I've been really passionate about throughout my life. Obviously, dinosaurs was one of them and my first.

After that I'd say my next big passion was cartoons/comics, the early/mid 90s was a fantastic time, you still got all the cartoons from the 80s (Transformers, Turtles, etc.) as well as the awesome ones of the time (Spider Man, X-Men, Batman, etc.) Watching those shows got me into reading comics at the time too, but because I was young and didn't know that there was such a thing as a dedicated comic book shop (my mum wouldn't have either) I could only get whatever they had at the local newsagents and when they stopped stocking Spider Man or X-Men then I couldn't read them anymore

Next Was Wrestling for me. I'd watched bits of wrestling from Hogan's WWF days and had always been interested in it, but without regular access it was something I couldn't really get passionate and obsess over. Then came 1997, one of my friends got Sky and so we regularly watched the wrestling at his house. We started playing wrestling in the back gardens, got wrestling video games (WWF War Zone PS1). Then in 98 my family got cable and wrestling just totally took over everything for me. Our wrestling matches had evolved to the stage of having weight divisions and home made belts, we had cage matches, ladder matches, weapons matches! It was my dream to become a wrestler. I vowed I would wrestle in the WWF some day...maybe WCW if I couldn't get there and never ECW!

Sad to say that wrestling dream never came true Once I got to my teens wrestling was beginning to lose its luster. Whilst most boys I knew had been football fans from a young age I never really got into it proper until I started high school. When I was young I would play with my friends because that's what they wanted to do, but I wasn't that into it...plus I was fat and not very good. But once high school started I got a lot more interested in it and watched it as often as I could, played at least once a day with my friends. It's probably the most sociable interest I've ever had.

Music was another thing most people seemed to be really into from a young age (something about Oasis vs. Blur...I don't care for either really), but again I didn't start until I hit high school. It started with Eminem and rap, before crossing into nu-metal with the likes of Linkin Park before full fledged heavy metal and rock (you know, proper music ). I had a few close friends that I talked about music constantly with, we even formed a band which I was briefly lead singer of...it didn't work out

But the music I liked didn't seemed to be getting made anymore after a while, the scene changed and I didn't like it. So I actually ended up back at a couple of old passions: first, comics. Now being older I realised there were such things as comic book shops (and the internet), so I got even further into them than I ever had before. I hadn't quite known there was such a thing as non-superhero comics, and the fact that a lot of them turned out to be some of my favourites was even better. I got back into wrestling too with TNA. I always wondered where the wrestlers of my youth had gone...and I found lots of them there! I finally got to go to a live show (twice) which was a childhood goal at last achieved.

My next passion took me further afield than I'd ever imagined: to Japan and the wonderful world of anime. I'd always been skeptical of anime as that weird Japanese thing (aside from the Pokemon and odd DBZ I'd watched as a kid). It took a chance watching of Ghost in the Shell to turn that all around for me and open up a whole new world for me. What I loved (and still do) about anime was the different perspectives and ideas it brought forth, new and interesting stories and character types that I wasn't used. And I found anime to be there and a real escape/comfort for me when I was at some of my lowest points in my life.

Films were probably my last true passion. I'd always been very into my films from a young age, but after I finished Uni they seemed to become something even more and bigger to me. I found myself going to the cinema 3 maybe 4 times a week (I still go at least once usually), seeing all sorts of films, even ones I knew I wouldn't like! I just really wanted to learn and appreciate them better and allow myself to become drawn into them. But the quality of films has sadly deteriorated over the last few years and so too a little of my love for them has went with it.

Is My Little Pony my new passion though? I don't know. It's definitely something that I love and is the most engaging thing I've found in a while, but it's not quite the same level as some of my previous passions. Perhaps that's because I'm not as young so my attention can be held by more than one thing at a time and perhaps it's because I'm at a better place in my life now, so I don't need to escape quite as much. But my love for it is only growing at this point, and who knows, something else could even come along that totally captures my heart and imagination. But, for now? I'm sticking with my ponies.