The annoyance of research stumps and dead-ends

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Do you guys ever get a new obsession, go crazy participating in it, then you feel like your not getting enough, so you end up looking it up on the web, and you scour wikipedia articles, blog articles, images on google, news articles, authors, participants, etc... and then you come to a complete dead end? Like you've learned all there is to know about the subject. You can't dig any deeper, unless your looking at fan fiction, which isn't really legitimate to you because it didn't come from the source. So there it is, and you can't get any more out of that activity because there isn't any more to learn, but you like the subject like crazy, and you feel like you just reached a wall, so the hobby just isn't fulfilling to you any more, and so you drop it?
I notice this every time I research a book, comic, video game, or movie. There's just dead ends galore. And you don't want to look at the other works by the same author, because your not interested in the authors works, your interested in that one work!
(This is why I love quantum theory, it just never ever ends.)

This is how I feel about Asperger's at the moment. But at least this forum keeps the topic going!

I can relate to that. I can go completely cold on an obsession that I've spend hundreds of hours on, if I can't access the information I need for some reason or other. Example: I've spent a lot of time researching the life of a 17th century Flemish painter and dug up everything there is to know about him. I know there is more information, but I can't access it because a) it's in an archive that isn't open to the public b) it is (or was) in the historical market of Aleppo, and that market is being destroyed by fire and gunfights at the moment. I have one more lead that perhaps could tell me more, but I just haven't got the motivation anymore to dig through 1000 pages of 17h century French.

Sure. I come to the end of available information all the time. I don't drop the subject however, just push it to the back burner. (My, it's crowded back there.) After a few weeks or years more info may become available or I'll find a new direction of attack, and I'll take the subject up again. It's never quite as interesting the second time around, though.

I feel the same way too, but I find the more I ask on forums in depth, the more I learn. Yay!! !

Curmudge, I know what you mean. But usually they only add little tidbits of information, so it's like a 2 second relief, then your on the edge again... waiting.