What is straight-up fun, no strings, when you are an aspie?

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It's been a month since I found out what aspergers really was and was convinced I had it. I've had a lot of depression, anxiety and some panic attacks or near misses, but now....one morning I woke up and felt sort of happy. I remembered how much I enjoyed reading
and doing stuff when I was a child - I used to question it , but not nearly as much as recently. Somewhere along the line I lost my confidence, that it was alright to be myself.

I'm told it takes a month to acquire a new habit, something to do with the limbic system and things seeming all wrong until the change kicks in, and this really does seem to be true.

In the last decade or so I have spent all my time with special interests, yes, but they were always geared towards "being discovered" at some point in the future, becoming a really useful and wanted person to an unknown group. I read plenty of non-fiction, studied cooking, learned languages....now I know who I am, it all seems a bit pointless. I noticed I got to my late 40s this way, and it still hadn't happened for me. ..... I am trying to think back to what I used to do when I was 4 or 5, before everything was all about other people.

What do little kids do that could be applied to adults in their spare time? Things that have nothing to do with social approval and don't even hint in that direction? I don't want to be led astray again........

Here is my short list:
painting pictures
popping bubble wrap
reading fiction
playing with animals

can you think of more?

Building with legos
Building with clay
Eating things that are fun to eat
Flying paper airplanes

cooking without a recipe
crawling, rolling, or tumbling through space rather than walking (I love this!)
chasing the cat around on all fours, getting into my humanimalism.
drawing on my body
playing (with) instruments
lighting candles, burning sage, creating rituals, meditating with my eyes open on the flicker of a flame until shapes and spirits begin to emerge
learning learning learning learning
(who cares if reading is pointless? it's all pointless from that point of view)

I did some of this when I was a kid, but as a child I was still extremely anxious and spent a good deal of time worrying about my inadequacies. As adults we can truly realize whatthehell enjoying ourselves is all really about.

Making cocktails (but only ones you havent made before. What's the fun in making cocktails if you only stick to one or two types?)
Playing xbox
Bowling
Going to the cricket

Some other things:

Jigsaw puzzles
Taking pictures (not photography, just taking pictures for the fun of it)
Taking things apart just to see what is inside
Watching ants
Planting seeds (not gardening, just planting seeds to watch them grow)
Reading comic books
Watching fish
Blowing up plastic bags and popping them
Put a drop of food coloring in water, and watch it
Put jello in strange containers and see what comes out
Silly putty
Mix vinegar and baking soda
Bubble gum

Here's a strange one: brine shrimp. You can buy these little eggs, and put them in salt water. The next day, there are these tiny little shrimp swimming around. They used to sell them as "sea monkeys".

You are doing great, keep it up! It's just occuring to me now, how wonderful it could be, to have a child's playfulness and an adult's pocket money and transport................

They still do, I believe! I had a colony of them a few years ago. It was fun to watch them squirt about. Also fascinating how their eggs can remain in a suspended state and then be re-activated with water and feeding. As they grew larger, their number decreased until I had about five that were about the size of my pinky finger nail.

Then my cat knocked them over and I had dried sea monkeys on my floor sadly they were too small to fry up.

Other things that have entertained me:
golfing in public at night (do not do this if you live in a city with a police force with no sense of humor)
setting up rope swings from streetlamps
city = guerrilla jungle gym
art from recycled / found objects

Also, a good friend who is in his 40s (and probably neurotypical but very atypical and interesting) builds ant farms. Apparently you can order ants online.

Speaking of insects, I used to put [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2LPHeSAk9Q]bees on a leash[/url when I was a kid. I thought I had this idea all on my own but turns out others have also decided to exact revenge on the little buggers. Unlike dude in this video, I used a piece of meat in a plastic container and then put the lid on once I had attracted a bee. Do not freeze it for more than a few seconds or else it will die! Animal cruelty not included (you can let the bee go once you are through with it and it will likely chew its way out of the leash).

The fate of a lot of my best projects and a lot of other things.

For myself it is researching and studying.

Last edited by Helixstein on 31 Jan 2011, 1:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

Reading
Drawing
Playing sudoku
Researching a special interest
Listening to music

Note that none of these things involve social interaction of any kind.

collecting music
listening to music [on a high-fidelity audio system]
making a silk purse out of a sow's ear [fixing corrupted audio via DSP]
collecting porn
viewing porn
using my fleshlight
learning of new fun things
test-driving different vehicles
going house-hunting with people who can afford houses [i like imagining i could live in 'em]
going car-shopping with people who can afford cars [i like imagining i could own and drive them]
going audio equipment shopping with people who can afford audio equipment [i like imagining i could have them in my listening room playing my music]

Searching for stop-motion animation information on the web
Playing Master of Orion 2 (I broke my power cable on my notebook and cannot play it right now. )
Playing Fallout 3
Doing stop-motion animation
Searching for horror films to download
Watching the military channel
Watching the history channel
Watching the discovery channel
Going for walks
Watching Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Watching the British tv show Bottom
Watching the British tv show Shameless

I am suprised no one said Masterbation yet.

Coloring in coloring books with colored pencils
Going to the park (or just your backyard) and picking up a stick, then pretending that the stick is a sword and you fence/slay enemies with it
Pretending to hold conversations with your favorite fictional characters; bonus points for voicing their responses back to yourself while trying to mimic their tone of voice/accent (even if you're bad at it)

i did such, in my last post.

Another thought occurred to me, Patronising their peers!