Special Interest: Where Did Yours Come From?

Post Reply New Topic

What decides on the focus of a special interest? Why specifically choose that one thing?
Do you notice when a new one starts (or when your only one started)? Or does it develop subtly and gradually and then accelerate or balloon into something more?

For me, a definite interest is plants. Ideally medicinal plants, but I've diversified into generally useful plants and sometimes just generally plants. But I know that if I get the chance to work with medicinal plants it's like a forgotten light goes on inside me and I suddenly realise how switched off I was before. It's pure excitable passion every time I learn an amazing plant fact or get a whiff of a happy Levisticum officinale W.D.J.Koch (sorry, couldn't resist! )

The peculiar thing is, I have no idea why this is my interest. I can trace it back as far as a book I read when I was about 8 yrs old, but I'm sure it goes back further. I'm now 29 and although my love of nature isn't so surprising to me, my specific passion for medicinal plants is always a curiosity. I wondered if other people had this same feeling of being allocated an interest rather than choosing one?

I don't know how that works. Once I became addicted to researching chimineas online and did it for weeks; even had a picture of one on my desktop at work. I never even bought one, and even though I don't mull over them online anymore, I still like it when I see them in yards. They make me feel good, like friends. I don't get it.

I think interests are the intrinsic part of who you are. Call it genes and chromosomes, if you will. For me, I will just find my curiosity about something being stirred---and I have no idea why. As a kid I was fascinated by gypsies. I needed to know what they were about, where they came from, etc. Now that I know they originated in western India, I want to know why they left and migrated west. (reason for my keen interest: It could be that there is some gypsy ancestry in my family tree---my mom and aunt seem to think so.)

It is that moment when your curiosity just gets stirred up---that you suddenly want to learn everything about a topic. You will search for, read, and absorb all information about said topic until that curiosity is quenched. Sometimes, the interest lasts a lifetime and the curiosity is never fully satisfied. It's just the way we aspies are made.

And learning about something that fascinates is fun fun fun.

Why the special interest? Because it feels good.

I have an interest in medicinal plants also. I smoke some every day.

I do not know where my general interests come from but I know a specific like of something tends to stem from them. For example my passion for watching musicals can branch off to be a current obsession with Glee musical numbers (boy my roommates got bored fast). If it dwindles there are other musicals that take its place like memorizing all the songs in Little Shop of Horrors and Singing in the Rain and Repo the Generic Opera.

It simmers down and I will focus on another interest for a while such as mythology and specific cooking, then it goes right back to musicals, dwindles and goes back to certain book genres, then back again.

For me, they seem to start the moment I am exposed to the thing. That's how it was with my current, and longest lasting, main special interest - playing music. When I got my first 'real' instrument (something that isn't an instrument which children play because they can be made cheaply, are easy to play, and it won't matter if they destroy them), my first bass, 14 years ago, that's when my special interest started - on the very day that I got it, at the moment I got it.

I suppose a special interest, for me, could be described as a 'love at first sight' type of thing.

My interest is cartoon animation. It first came when I was a toddler age 3 or 4. I also started drawing around that age too. With that interest, I'm turning it into a career.

Most of mine throughout the years have been extremely random, but I know that part of them was due to my strong interest in series of things and patterns, and I took interest in them because these were variations of things that I was surrounded with.

As a kid, I was obsessed with television and marketing logos, elephants, women's bathing suit backs, milk carton packaging, schedules, lists of names, cats/dogs and different series of novels and books. These things all occurred in various forms in my natural environment, so it's possible that these were just things that I've just recognized as having a pattern earlier on.

I'd also create a wide variety of imaginary worlds which mostly had anthropomorphic characters. This was due to the fact that I found other humans confusing and intimidating. I found cartoon animals easier to understand as they had exaggerated expressions and seemed less threatening and friendlier.

Interesting question! Hmm, mine evolve from something I discover or hear about. My first was Dinosaurs & my mom helped me learn to read using books that featured a bit about them.
I am not sure about where my insect one came from, maybe my obssessive collecting impulses.
UFOs? Because there was a big Flap when I was a kid ( circa 1973). Narrowing it down to Roswell? Because I heard the first leak/rumors in the late 1970s. That one was a natural one, a progression from a broad area to something specific. ( There was an admission of truth from some CIA types yesterday that got glossed over on the News)
Most of my others actually boil down to two main categories: The Natural world & Space exploration. And edge stuff, mysteries bordering on respectability.

Sincerely,
Matthew

Something about the special interest just grabs me...

Geology - a school trip to Allendale when I was 8 years old, an area with a lot of mines (largely lead), as soon as I stepped off the coach the car park of where we were staying was littered with huge chunks of quartz and pyrite which instantly had me hooked. It also got me attention from teachers for the first time ever and allowed me to show my intelligence (most primary schools rejected me as they thought I was simple-minded, as I didn't speak no one paid attention to me).

There are special interests where there are many different areas of a subject to explore so it's a never ending source of information that appeals, or where they have allowed me to show I'm not an idiot - teachers praised me or my mother showed me off, this was a rarity so the more complex the interest and the deeper I could get into it the better from my perspective...

Ancient Egypt - the most interesting book in the school library in primary school, and a love of dead things (e.g. mummies).
Biology - I was exceptionally good in sciences, there were lots of intricate pieces to various different living things to explore.
Sewing machines - my mother worked for Singer, no one would babysit me so I went to work with her and I'd demonstrate machines.
Religion and philosophy - a long-term interest in the idea of belief, it's always been a baffling and fascinating concept to me.

Menstrual activism and sexual health - current special interest and this is actually pretty long-term, the main source came from discovering menstrual cups and from there I thought 'what else don't I know about?' and discovered that like many I was grossly under-educated about sexual anatomy and similar subjects, learning also gave me some power back to heal after sexual abuse. Then from menstruation came lesser interests in media, marketing, feminism and environmentalism which spanned into my special interest becoming more wide-ranging, but it can be traced back to primary school when I was the only one brave enough to read a book on puberty and growing-up I was the one who taught others about such things.

I think some special interests like this are deep rooted, there is always an interest there but something sparks off a period of focus, the more complex the interest the more you get into it as there is always more to learn and new aspects of the interest to explore that keep your interest...and for me a less widely-known or more taboo subject appeals because it's something special to me.

I really wish I understood how my special interests worked - why I become so emotionally invested in them, why I become obsessed with certain things and not others, and why it feels like I can't choose what I become obsessed with or for how long. It probably has something to do with the way autistic brains are wired.

I started listening to music on the radio when I was 3. I also watched music related TV shows such as The Monkees, The Partridge Family and Saturday Night Fever. I started to to get into Rock n Roll at the age of 10. I started off with Bruce Springsteen, and than I started getting into the older music from the 50s and 60s. The Kinks became my favourite band when I was 12, though I started to notice them at the age of 8. I liked The Beatles for a few years when I was in High School and I went back to The Kinks after I graduated. I've been listening to all of the British Invasion bands of the 60s since I was 14.

I guess I have never considered where my interest in art came from, exactly. I didn't live in a large town growing up, so I'm not even really sure how I was shown the concept of "art". What I do know is that I loved drawing pictures. Even in first grade, I would draw pictures and pretend to be made up artists and sign the made up name on the picture and then we would hang them all over the walls and force our moms to come to the "gallery". I had a very compassionate NT friend who indulged me in this game every so often when she wasn't busy teaching me about the world of MTV and movies that weren't stricly G rated, my sheltered little world was expanded. It must have been something I saw on TV because I know my parents didn't take me to an art museum in first grade, at least I cant imagine they would. Then I was totally enamored with the show Zoobilee Zoo, in which a Lion character was an Artist, and that completely sealed my idea of wanting to be an artist and paint and sculpt.

I currently have a special interest in human behavior. It started with the ability to know my teachers in school. I could do that as far back as I can remember. My actual "special interest" in it is more because I have an increased ability, and it helps me with moving forward right now in my life. I think I was interested in knowing people because I wanted to be accepted. Also, it would help protect me from them.

I have an obsession with the NBA and basketball history. Not necessarily playing or watching it, though I love the Celtics. This special interest started when my mom bought me a book and I read it over and over. Now I know a lot about it.