Does anyone else frequently change their 'obsessions'?

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I find that most of the symptoms of Aspergers fit me, but I tend not to have long-term pervasive obsessions/hobbies. Most of my pursuits tend to be short lived but nonetheless very involved and intensive. Does anyone else have this tendency?

I find it to be rather annoying. I would much prefer if I was able to easily maintain an interest. I would probably be a lot more successful. Since I started university I have changed my major twice (after three years). Luckily there was overlap between the majors so I could make up the difference in summer courses, but still it is problematic when I think of the idea of committing myself to one career. Does anyone have any advice for dealing with this? I feel like it's just inevitable and that I'm always going to crave novelty so maybe I shouldn't make a career out of one of my special interests, especially if it is a rather difficult career to pursue (that requires full motivation).

I cannot say that mine change all that frequently typically, but they do change seemingly at random. I will just completely lose interest in something I once held dear and latch onto something new... it does bother me, but I am learning to work with myself instead of against myself in this regard... to just do the best at whatever makes me comfortable at the moment.... just do whatever you think will bring you bliss, in my opinion.

I can say that I have, outside of broader special interests, special "projects," where I am uncontrollably, obsessively working on one song, or code module, or something until it is done... but that could be BPD.

Maybe you should try and take some time to just let yourself go worry free with your interests, and see how you end up feeling? Personally, I think I should just avoid committing myself to too much in the long term :X I think it causes problems for me.

WELL.....as I have had like about a million different interests in the past 25 years of my life, I think they do change, but my main ones never do.

I still am obsessed with writing and photography and psychology.....I'm a writer and a freelance photographer after all...haha i made those work for ME!

But other interests I've had in the past sort of die out eventually.....they come back sometimes, but usually they just fizzle out.

I have a stranglehold of my interests because they help me write but before that the longest I had an interest was 6 months. Even when I was into photography over 6 years every 6 to 8 months I just felt like giving up on it. People are trying to get me back into it but I just don't care.

I get obsessed with a new thing everyday, like I'll be really obsessed with one thing one day and the next I wouldn't even care and it's soon to be replaced by another thing, which I obsess about.

I have ADHD too though and changing interests and getting bored with jobs and other such things is very common.

I have an ADHD diagnosis but there are a lot of Asperger's symptoms that fit me as well and I have a tendency to get interested/obsessed in new things quite often. Nothing "abnormal" about you. Asperger's is afterall a spectrum of people with overlapping symptoms.

Usually there are tiers for me on interests. Each level seems to play a different intensity and different timeframe.

For example, I have 3 life long pervasive interests that are really more a backbone of many of my other interests: Engineering, and Algebraic math (formula based math, arithmetic pisses me off)... and there is a 3rd one but its one I don't talk about

But then usually there are interests that I consider long term, which generally are completely obsessive for the first year, become less important the second and I generally walk away some point in the middle of the second year.

Then I have right-now interests which last for months, usually 1 to 6... often they end because I either have gobbled all the new knowledge that I can up about them or because something has triggered aversion inside my mind about them (like if they involve people and there is a person who through their behavior destroys my perception of the community's attitude. this happens often in social interests since I typically am wrong about my assumptions about community attitudes in an optimistic way.)

And then, there is stuff that catches my attention. This can last minutes through to as long as a couple of days. This thread would be something like that. At the moment I am shut off from the world answering this thread because it interests me and I want to share my perception.

However, I am not sure if the above traits are linked to my location on the spectrum or if they are just normal for people. I actually notice NT's having similar flows of interests and I think the only difference is that they are better at not having to lock on tight and put all of their focus into interests.

My major special interests rarely last longer than 2 to 3 years. Minor ones can last anywhere from a couple of days to several months. My last short-term special interest lasted only 2 months.

Mine change, but only between a couple subjects and not that often.

It's either music, cars, or weapons. Always one of those three, and has been since I was 2 or 3 years old.

My longest SI lasts now for 20 years and my life turns around it. From childhood I kept my passion for cats, but I do not collect books anymore and know everything by heart or collect porcelain cats (but I still have my childhood-collection, but in a box). I am still fascinated by planes a lot, but I do not collect items anymore. One of my earliest SI were baby buggies, because I loved the shape of it and the chrome frame and the spinning chrome wheels (I got attentive to it age 3) and I was cutting them out from magazines and collected them and being older I visited daily a warehouse, where I would spent a couple hours to watch, touch and smell them. I was the "weird silent girl" watching the baby buggies, but people didn't interfere. (I still get a fuzzy feeling, when I goggle "baby buggies from the 80th).
Now there are some obsessions coming and going, but I am still into my 20-year-SI in a way, so they are side-obsessions, though I enjoy them, but they don't have this attraction like my strong SI.

Sometimes I have the same special interest for years. The last one I had lasted almost six years, and now I've just started another one. Usually between the special interests that last years, I'll have some that last for about a week.

My obsessions are in the arts/crafts area. My dining room is not being used as a dining room, it holds most of my supplies. At this time I'm obsessing over yarn. It's hard for me to leave a craft store without yarn.

My other obsessions are more short term. Once I get a subject into my head I'll spend days searching mainly via Google and my university library.

My obsessions tend to last a while, but when I stop obsessing about something, it usually is abrupt, and I quickly find something else to have as a primary obsession.

Yep, my special interests/obsessions change quite frequently. I have a few long-term obsessions--L&O SVU, psychology, true crime stories etc.--but most of mine don't last as long.

A lot of the time, I lose interest and then it suddenly comes back.

I never consciously change them or choose them for that matter. They just happen. And when I gradually develop news ones, I usually hold onto the older ones as well, though they can fade somewhat, but I still go back to thinking about them now and then. I used to be really interested in linguistics and English word etymologies a few years ago. I could tell you, for example, for 99% of the words you're using, whether they're Germanic in origin or not. It's often events in my life that influence my development of special interests. Right now, for example, among my primary interests is the human body (or the bodies of all animals, more generally), which is an interest whose development I can trace to going through a phase of hypochondria and doing a lot of reading on various things related to the body. But my other main interests, geography, weather & climate, and dates (calendar dates, that is), on the other hand, are interests I can remember pretty much always having.

Somewhat, but I usually return to them after awhile of prusuing another interest.
Let's see: Dinosaurs, Insects, Space, Dolphins, Salt Water Aquariums, UFOs, Paranormal research.
I go back & forth between all these subjects.

Sincerely,
Matt

I don't call something an obsession, unless I've been into it for long. But I can have temporary interests, or just things that get stuck in my head after I'm exposed to them and are not 'intrusive thoughts', so they'd be closer to a temporary interest, in a song or a phrase, a definition or whatever.