AS special interest v. NT hobby

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The difference lies in popularity and the ability to turn the interest into a group activity. Even if a small group are interested in something, like the Crimean War, it can be a group activity. Being interested in types of sewing machines, unless your in that business, is autistic.

I suppose it comes down to hobby being something you do in your spare time and an aspie-type obsession being something you might blow off real responsibilities for. I've done things like that many times over the years, blowing off school, work, family, friends, so on. They all seemed like great ideas at the time...like spending all day watching The Comedy Channel when it was finally added to the cable in my area (I pretended to be sick so I could stay home from school and watch it. I knew the day the cable upgrade was finally going to make it watchable in my area by studying the incremental improvements to the signal strength for that channel range).

I am trying to get better at it, but I can be a real ogre, at times, if I am not allowed to go ahead with my current obsession (of course, I rotate through many, so it is hard for others to know the status of them). I also immediately suspect that any questions about what I am doing is an attempt to make me stop, which inspires immediate defensiveness and anger. I am getting better at simply talking about it, but these must have been defensive/coping mechanisms I developed as I was growing up.

I would also think if the interest is dangerous or society frowns upon it. Nts probably would be more easily led from interests say like guns. Like you could never get me away from one of my two interests no matter if the church comes and tries to save me.

NTs join the National Rifle Association. Aspies join the National Flashing Light association. That is the main difference.

One is lethal and the other is atypical.

ruveyn

AS special interests are abnormal in how a person pursues them. It's pretty irrelevant whether or not an interest is a common or unique interest. It can hint at AS depending on what the interest is (very detail-orientated, no imaginative/creative interest), but the degree of weirdness of an interest is not relevant in any way.

Someone's AS special interests can be getting to know people. It's a pretty common thing to do for non-autistic people, yet it can be a special interest if it is pursued in an abnormal way such as talking to everybody, not keeping in contact with new connections and only ever just wanting to say 'hi' to people.

On the other hand, a person with AS can be interested into platypuses (seriously, that's not exactly common) and know all about them and it's not an AS special interest because they A) spent a couple of hours on this daily but can eventually stop easily like everyone else or B) because their interest doesn't impair them in everyday life by not leaving their mind and so on.

a special interest is something you obsess over. Always thinking about it, asking the same questions to people and questions you already know the answer to just to be able to talk about it, if it's an object meltdowns if it breaks or is lost, etc.

a hobby is something you like to do in your spare time. If you're asked what you like to do you say it, but you don't go into detail and don't obsess over it.

Thanks for your replies - very interesting

"Special interests" is one of the areas that sometimes makes me wonder whether I have AS or not.........I always tend to think my interest in music and sound recording could be construed as fairly neurotypical.

But the details of how I work on it are rather strange. I got a music computer to help me to record better music, but I kept finding myself spending hours and hours just messing about with the computer itself, digging into tiny little aspects of how it worked. And I've spent loads of time on cataloguing all my recorded songs, adding copious written notes about all the details I could remember, with no discrimination between a good recording and a bad one - just a powerful urge to index the whole shebang as comprehensively as I possibly can. No effort is too much to achieve that goal. Some people get that carried away about the Beatles recordings and trivia (I've done that too), but it seems strange and inappropriate for me to do a similar job on my own work, which is never going to be well-known.

The other thing I noticed while compiling all those notes about how I recorded each song, was how I'd repeatedly been sucked into the technology instead of focussing on improving my artistic skills. I'd spend weeks making multi-track tape recorders out of ordinary domestic ones, though the sound quality was pretty rough. I never considered that all I had to do was to save up a bit of money and just buy some adequate equipment and get on with the serious usiness of developing the art form.

And why all the emphasis on multi-track recording? Because I could barely cope with the frustration of playing with other musicians, they could never quite play the way I wanted them to, and I couldn't do what they wanted without getting bored or confused, so I kept returning to multi-track recording so that I could play everything myself. The only reason I associate with other musicians is that it counters the loneliness of my solo work.

I spent a year or two doing Web music collaborations where I'd add vocals to other people's backing tracks. It was fun, and they must have liked the stuff because they kept asking me to do more, but it was also very frustrating because the songs weren't my own and I missed the sense of freedom to follow my own instincts.

No doubt my best recordings and performances are pretty good these days, but a lot of it is mimickry rather than being truly original.

I used to tell myself that my real goal was to become a famous musician and make a living out of it, but somehow I never really set my mind to that. It's always been the process of playing and recording that are an end in itself, though I'm never satisfied with anything I've produced. During my darkest moments, it's been the only thing that's made sense to me, to work on another song. I wouldn't want to live if I couldn't do that. It's more like a religion than a hobby - i.e. silly but I love it. I've often considered giving up my day job just so I'd have time to pursue music properly.

So, does that sound like an Aspie special interest or a NT hobby?

ToughDiamond, you could make this your day job rather than being a special interest and/or hobby. Why not go to school to become a sound engineer. After all, if the process of recording and futzing with the equipment is what interests you, a day job as a sound engineer makes the most sense.

Have to interject here that I have a history of trying to make my special interests into careers. It is pretty exciting for five years or so, but ultimately the stress of having to do what the client wants (or the boss wants) instead of exploring what I want becomes too much and kills the passion. Nothing is worse than being trapped in a job (making good money) that you've completely lost interest in. Just my experience of 40 years. I do know of a person (almost certainly with AS) who became a real expert in a very narrow field and consults for insurance companies and acts as an expert witness at trials. Has done this for decades, totally opposite from my experience.

It's an idea I keep coming back to - making a living out of music - and while I was unemployed I nearly went for Enterprise Allowance to start a one-man musical services business (EA was a scheme where they basically paid you the unemployment benefit for a year while you ran your own fledgling business).

But I foresee problems - AnnaLemma has mentioned one - i.e. having to work to the client's specifications. I felt the frustration of that while doing Web collaborations, singing other people's songs, and I gradually stopped bothering.

I probably wouldn't get much out of a sound engineering school - I hardly learn anything in a conventional educational setting, unless the stuff is explained very clearly, and I get a lot of social anxiety.

Then there's the problem of cost effectiveness.......I once recorded a couple of vocal tracks for money, over the Web, and earned £100 - but I couldn't stop myself labouring over the result, ironing out tiny faults that nobody else would have noticed, so the time investment was colossal.

Still, it's an intriguing idea. If I get a positive DX for Aspergers, my plan is to use it to get some adjustments to my working conditions in the day job, which hopefully will allow me to continue drawing a reasonable salary for the next 3 of 4 years without getting too stressed out and ground down. After that, I'll probably retire and live frugally off savings until my pension kicks in at 65. If the DX or the adjustments don't work out, I'll either leave or get sacked earlier than that, which is the same basic path only it'll happen earlier and I'll have less savings. Either way, in the not too distant future I'll be pretty much free to do whatever I want to do, with at least some kind of means of support in the form of savings. At that point, I'll be able to dabble in the music business in whatever way suits me best, and as it won't need to be my main source of money, I'll be able to be quite picky about what I take on.

One of my special interests is cars, I can tell you almost anything about a car especially an exotic car, especially Ferraris

There have been times when my interest was either exclusively the focus of particular group, or widely popular. The difference between my Autism driven fixation/interest was the NT version in regards to the exact same content, was still marked and significant.