Is it "wrong" to have "special interests"

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I know people with AS tend to have unusual interests that they obsess over a lot, and that can cause problems for them and family members, but lately I feel as if you're not allowed to have any special interests at all, that you should only be interested in the "normal" stuff other people within your age, gender and ethnic group are even if you think it's utterly stupid. But then how boring life would be! If my interests make me happy (such as drawing cartoons and toy collecting or playing Nintendo games) that's all that should matter, even if other people think it's absurd for a woman my age.

Special interests are wonderful! Absolutely wonderful! They might be the only aspect of autism that's always an asset. (Then again, I did see a movie where a guy lost his fiancee because he was too obsessed about his special interest. Personally, I think it worked out better for everyone that way, though.)

I just tell 'normalcy' to piss off. If my interest makes me happy then God damnit, I ain't giving it up.

I have no idea how to not have a special interest.

To be great is to be misunderstood.
  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't have life-long special interests, but I tend to focus intensely on one topic for weeks to months at a time. I return to some things fairly often, but it's usually not exactly the same each time.

How can you go through life without being intensely focused on something? I have no idea how to do this.

I don't talk about my current interest unless people ask, and I don't talk too much about any one subject. I try to talk about past interests, not just my current interest. That's as far as I can go. Fortunately, I have a lot of past interests, which helps a bit.

Is there anything wrong with having special interests?

That's a "yes and no" answer.

What's NOT ok is, for example, obsessing over interests to the point that you alienate your family or avoid duties/responsibilities.

This is from personal experience, btw. There are things I do that absolutely unnerves my wife because there ARE things she should reasonably expect from me as her husband. I'm caught between trying to really make a career as a composer while I teach piano lessons, play in a band, as well as fulfill my duties as a church pianist (which I also take very seriously). But I'm also deeply committed to my religion, reading the Bible, and discussing those things. My wife understands and supports (and joins me in) my commitment to my jobs/gigs and my faith. So 6pm is not the best time of the day for me to sit in the bathtub for 2 hours studying the Bible while she's left alone to feed the kids and clean house. It's not fair to expect her to shoulder that weight, and my reading time can come at a more appropriate part of the day. Or if I'm discussing something in PPR, 6am is not the time to get started writing a response when I'm supposed to be getting my kids dressed for daycare.

What I DO, though, is set aside MOST of my day during which I can study the Bible and compose music. I carve out huge chunks of my day in which I do nothing but write music. No telephone calls. No WrongPlanet time. No playing checkers on the iPad. Just composing and drinking unholy amounts of coffee. I do my best to make the most of my Synclavier time (where I do my best work) before I have to go to piano lessons because I know I won't really feel like writing when I'm away from my home studio. I have a lot of space between lessons, and depending on what's going on I might practice, read, or edit a score (which is what I do with most of my in-between time when I'm REALLY hot on a project). I even have an entire day (Thursday) devoted to nothing but composing music. And by composing, I mean rapidly brainstorming, "through-composing," sketching, jamming/improvising, recording, and so on and NO EDITING ALLOWED. My only lessons on Thursdays are in the evenings, so I always get a lot of good work in.

I've had to make a lot of tough changes due to my obsessions. I'm totally obsessed with 12-tone technique, but I found that composing that way was terribly harmful for me because I would obsess over EVERY SINGLE NOTE that I wrote, making sure each note happened at an exact predetermined time on an exact predetermined instrument at an exact predetermined volume level for an exact length of time and in an exact combination with other notes... The process took a long time and involved an endless number of steps and yielded something so complex that it didn't really communicate anything musically and failed to reach any kind of meaningful conclusion. I haven't given up on composing that way, but I've had to totally rethink the how and why of my own music in order to decide how best to move on. For the moment I'm writing music that I know I can get performed using more conventional methods taking advantage of the tools I have to speed the process. I obsess less now over the compositional process and every bit over getting work done, and now I get done in a week or two what once took months and, what's more, I actually finish projects.

What IS ok is this: When I obsess over things, I find I can stay on-task for longer periods of time than most people (NTs) do with most things. My finished musical scores are as close to perfect as my knowledge will allow (I'm not a very good music engraver, but my scores make sense). My scores are highly detailed and leave nothing to chance. 1/3 of my composing time is committed to getting the ideas down, and the remaining 2/3 is spent editing, editing, and editing.

My special interest being composing music, I tend to engage in love affairs with the instruments I write for. The 3-octave set of handbells at my church have largely gone unused over the last 5 years, so I took it upon myself to teach myself how to play solo bells. The bulk of my work in the last 6 months has been composing handbell duets for my wife and I, and a few weeks ago we started learning how to play 4-in-hand. We don't have anyone to teach us, so we're making this up as we go! I'll write some music based on what I want to hear, and then I'll check what I've written with the actual bells to see if what I've written can actually be done by two people. I'm not good at writing choreography, but my wife is really good at memorizing patterns and problem-solving. It's this "anything/everything is possible" attitude that has helped us learn in half a year what takes most people years of study. Within just a few months of starting bells, we were already playing with a small orchestra. So in a lot of ways obsessing over special interests does pay off.

The beauty of sacrificing all for the sake of special interests is that it allows us to do things NTs just can't do. However, you have to keep things in perspective and develop a good sense of proportion. Is your obsession or hyper-focus hurting someone? Do you understand how to prioritize? I don't do well working with other people, and I actually find the solitude of what I do to actually enhance the creative edge that I have. But during the day, I'm fortunate because I don't really have that many duties/responsibilities. If you're trying to work a "real job," you have to keep your sights on your superiors and your co-workers and actively working to somehow fit in socially and politically. For me, those are difficult weaknesses to overcome and I've just shut out the outside world in general. I can make that work for me, but it's difficult for most people to work that way. Where it hurts me is that I'm too scared to ask for project funding--people don't tend to like me very much, so it makes it difficult to approach local arts councils. But on the other hand, I'm good at sniffing out free resources that otherwise be prohibitively expensive--like a $10,000 set of handbells!

Oh, and I also have friends in radio broadcast, which means I can get free airplay if I want it, as well as interviews. While I don't really care that much about media attention, one advantage I do have with where I play handbells is that my performances are televised regionally. Special interests are GREAT to have--but two things I'd say you need to be sure of: They are not hurting you or anyone under your care; there is some form of payoff. The payoff for me is that I contribute to religious services and to media ministry, and the attention I get carries the potential for getting other kinds of work directly related to what I do. If you work that hard at your interests, you deserve compensation. If you're truly good at what you do, it's possible to go from being a nobody, anti-social aspie to a multi-millionaire. There is nothing wrong with that as long as you are honest with yourself and keep things in the proper perspective.

Special interests are okay! why wouldn't they be?

NTs call theirs hobbies.

Not in my opinion, it isn't. My special interests are the foundation of my personality. I would be like Rain Man without them.

I agree with all that's been said here.

I don't see anything wrong with a special interest as such, in fact my life would be a lot poorer without them. I think most of us need something fascinating that we can really focus on. It can be a very relaxing and confidence-boosting thing (when it's going right)...I've met people who feel that I get too technical and thorough about stuff, and I always think that if everybody were like them, nothing would get done apart from social grooming.

But there are risks. You can alienate yourself, partners can get ignored and made to feel unvalued - it's as bad as living with a job zombie - and special interests can swell out of all proportion till the rest of your life doesn't get any attention at all. Aspies often try to share their special interests, and it can take years for them to realise that nobody else cares about it. Judging by the results of my special interests when I was in my 20s and 30s, I achieved some near-miracles with music recording equipment on a low budget, but if I'd just tightened my belt and bought the gear I needed, I might have been a lot more musically talented than I am. Most of my innovative technical ideas were of little use to anybody but myself, and modern technology has made most of them worthless even to me. I'd like to live out my life again with a more balanced approach.

No way, it's not wrong! In periods of time where I don't have any special interest I become depressed. Socializing with others never makes me as happy as having something to research and study obsessively I think, for Aspies, special interests help keep us alive and functioning.

It's not "wrong" to have special interests, but you can't expect other people to be interested in them, too.