Irulan wrote:
What feelings do you typically experience when your special interest ends? Do you try to come back to it, in hope your efforts will make you interested in it again?
My special interests, or obsessions, are what really indicated to me I might be an aspie. Mine are very consuming and change very quickly, like a few months.
I don't really notice when one interest ends as I'm into a new one. If I think back on my old obsession it's a with a little embarrassment, "How could I have been into that? I don't know what I was thinking. This new thing is going to be my life-long passion from now on!"
Currently I'm into cryptography and combinatorics. But really, this will be my life-long passion! Before this it was growing plants in the genera Pelargonium and Sarcocaulon (relatives of everyday geraniums). I was going to grow one of each species and have a huge breeding program! I don't know what I was thinking. My kids think it's funny, Dad's shifting obsessions.
Some of mine come back, like learning languages and branches of math and physics, obsession with the Soviet Union, orchids, playing pokemon, lock picking. With math especially I recall what I learned and can build on it.
Some are gone forever (I think), like beetle systematics and my interest in biology, breeding marigolds, snakes, dinosaurs, learning about the Amish, playing the banjo. I remember about them but I'm a little embarrassed I was interested and may pretend not to know.
Some I have no idea, like range-finder cameras, rocketry, shortwave radios, piano. I keep some of the stuff from those obsessions around and it seems to be from a former life.
I never try to come back to anything. The interest is either there or it isn't.