Goodbye, furries!

Ay me. I'm beginning to become bored with the furries.

For those who don't know me well, for a long while now I've been fascinated by furries. I go through phases like that, although the furry phase has lated longer than most. Lots of people assumed that because I was so interested in reading furry comics and websites and blogs I was secretly furry, but that was never the case. I just wanted to learn.

I love learning about points of view that are different from mine. All of the bloggers I read are having experiences that, in some way or another, are very different than my own. What I find most fascinating are entire groups of people who share an idea that's completely out of my realm of understanding and experience. I go through phases where I learn everything I can about them. It's actually very interesting.

One of the first groups I learned about was sadomasochistic slaves. I was interested to find out how you could love someone who hits you all the time. I was also, at one point, infatuated with psychics since all of my experiences have been decidedly non-extrasensory. In grad school I was fascinated by transgendered individuals after writing a paper on transgendered voice therapy for a class. I've never felt out-of-place being a woman, and the lengths that trandsgendered people go to just to feel comfortable are amazing. I was breifly interested in cargo cults around that time too, and the desire to pierce my tongue lead me to learn all about body modification and the culture that surrounds it. Then I moved on to the furries.

Ah, the furries, who were a good source of learning for a long time now. I think that my interest lasted so long because there are so many types of furries out there. There's the regular furries, the lifestyle furries (who do all that they can to live as the animal they've chosen), the babyfurs, the macrofurs, the microfurs, the inflationists, the conjoined furries, the fursuiters, and so many more. I spent hours learning all that I could about them, but now I'm afraid that I've learned all there is to know.

Throughout all of my phases there was one continuing theme. Why. Why are you different than me? What happened to make us have such different viewpoints? I've often wished that a sociologist or a psychologist would study these groups, especially the furries, to illuminate why they're so different. After growing up in a small, small town where everyone was so similar - hell, most people were related - it's interesting to study all the ways that people can be different.

So now I'm without a topic. Lately I've been learning about polyamory because I have trouble understanding how you can love someone without having that insular, just-you-and-me feeling that comes with it, but I think I get it now. I need something else to learn about.

Any suggestions?