Dont seem to have a special interrest?

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Feels great being able to relate with some of you guys.. I wish that I knew about this website long before now, I grew up without it and felt prity much alone with AS.

@TPE2

I dunno, in my own case, I can actually recognise myself in the description 'repetitive, restricted, and stereotyped' with regards to my own special interests in the past. Frinstance, I'd be interested in, say, Transformers, and I'd draw them repeatedly. I'd start with the best known ones, like Optimus Prime, then continue down the line to minor characters, and then I'd get bored with what I'm doing, or dissatisfied with my efforts and... I'd start all over again some weeks later. With Optimus Prime.

Or some other time, I'd be into Greek mythology, and after reading the stories in a book about ancient myths and sagas, I'd set about constructing the Olympian gods' family tree. And I'd be occupied with that for a fairly long time, until I'd hit a dead end. And start over again some time later.

Now that I have a new, fresh interest (culture of East Asia in general and Indonesia in particular), I am very, very wary of this changing into an obsession/autistic special interest, and I'm careful not to let that happen. I know what signs to look out for. Because I know sometimes when a special interest becomes 'repetitive, restricted, and stereotyped', I'm not even enjoying it genuinely anymore, I'm just doing it to get some kind of comfort, to take my mind of things that are frustrating me somehow. And that's not how it's supposed to be.

But I completely agree with you when you say that some interests of people who aren't autistic, are hilariously simplistic and repetitive.

Yes, id also sometimes have some kind of varying interrest, If I become interrested in something, Id read dozens and dozens of articles on the internet about it or read about it where-ever I can, but I never thought of that as something that I do because of AS, if normal people dont do that, I had no idea.

But yeah, now that I think about it, when I look at average people, they all seem to be interrested in a fewer things than me, also making those few things major defining part of who they are? why would you do that, Id rather look thoroughly through a large amount of things and then choose what I like after and along the way.

But thats unfair I guess, I must be thinking of a minority of NT's, those who really take their narrow interrests seriously. OR maby they have many interrests and choose to only express few of them? I know I certainly dont express all my interrests :s

My interest are very random although I have some "regulars".
It's mostly the intensity that is a problem, I will damage my future, social life and so on just to reed about my latest obsession.
When a new obsession takes over, I dissapear from the face of the earth and I only see my girlfriend, probably because she can deal with/even loves my obsessions.
I used to play lot of video games until I started to have relationships with girls. Before girls all I did was playing games and social life was limited to school.

It's very hard for me to fight the obsessions ... when I know everything I want to know I normalize about the subject and only talk about it when I meet other people with that interest.
I'm always interested in cinema but I have my obsessions in cinema and then I watch 8 films by the same director each day etc ...

@ChrispyBiscuits

For my part, I've met many people who weren't autistic, who had a wide range of interests which they pursued in their spare time... which actually made me reflect and say to myself: 'Wow, they do all these cool things and they have the time for them, while here I am, doing my semi-obsessive little thing every time I get home (i.e. at that time reading in grammar books and dictionaries of foreign languages)'. And I can say, interacting with them has inspired me to take it easy on my own special interests and even them out a little. So for that, I'm grateful to them.

The funny thing is that Aspies are not necessarily good at their special interests. I, for one, am certainly not. I mean I'm much better than the average person at my interests, but not really good in comparison with professionals or well informed amateurs. I like to indulge myself in my interests purely for my pleasure, so productivity does not really matter. Self-conscious NTs would enjoy narrow interests mostly because they have a goal in their mind, they want to achieve something, for instance making their interests profitable, attracting the other gender, or simply making friends and having interactions with people. Another reason might be that I, along with a subgroup of autistics, don't have a reliable long-term memory, but have attention deficit that sets back not only the efficiency of learning but the prospects of achieving greater success on the fields of special interests too.