Too Many Special Interests!

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I have a problem. Of late I appear to be collecting special interests without getting rid of any of them. For about four years I've been obsessed with Star Trek, then two years ago I started getting really into ASDs as well (currently my biggest one), a year after that I fell in love with dinosaurs, and now, out of nowhere and completely randomly, I've developed a fascination with and adoration for actor Gene Wilder. It's only been four days, but I've already seen eight of his movies (and know the release dates for all of them), three interviews on youtube, and am debating searching for a photograph or something that I can mail to him to get autographed before he dies (he's eighty now and doesn't have much time left). It's driving me crazy, because I don't want another interest; juggling three was hard enough, and it's really hard to dedicate adequate time to all of them if I have too many going on at once, but it's like I can't help it, I can't turn the obsessive thoughts on and off like a switch! Anyone else ever had more special interests than you could handle? How did you deal with them all?

I go through periods where a particular band is my focus. Last month, it was Boston. I just had to know everything about Tom Scholz, Brad Delp's suicide, the Boston guitar sound, etc. I discovered demos from their pre-Boston days when they were Mother's Milk, etc. This was soon replaced by a healthy obsession with Billy Joel and his discography. Lately, I've been on a System Of A Down diet.

It does interest me how these things just develop out of the blue. I mean, do normal people listen to entire discographies like I do or is that an aspie thing? Anyway, to answer your question, it seems like special interests don't occur at the same time. One supplants the other. I don't think I'd have the wherewithal to handle multiple special interests at once.

I have TONS of special interests. There's always a main one, but the others don't just go away so my mind creates incredibly complex systems to rotate between all of them. It works really well for me.

Genealogy has been my main interest for years, but I have infinite special interests (either that, or my special interest is just learning [If I don't know something, I am compelled to learn everything about it])

But it's good to broaden your horizons, interests can change; just don't get overwhelmed.

Post-Script: Of course you are obssesed with Gene Wilder, he is the best.

Yes. Yes he is

I remember an artist talked about being pregnant with an idea and enjoying the feeling.

PS I also have a bunch of special interests.

One of my minor interests is stalking Jeri Ryan on g+. It is a half-hearted program, I have better things to do than stalk celebrities, even those whose cybernetic performances mirror aspergers so well as to be personally compelling.

My major interests are people, autism, producing visual art, playing multiple musical instruments, sound production, theatrics, cinema, computers and computer games, sci-fi and esoteria. It took me years and years to find an umbrella for my so-called "splinter skills", but I recently found one - muzak video production. It has allowed me to pull all these skills together into a viable cohesive package. So now I can say my obsessive interest is making muzak videos about my autistic experiences using the help of volunteer actors (people - friends).

I have HFA. I am a muzak video producer.

I also like cooking, nutrition research, cycling, wandering and yoga.

This is not easy to do.

I have special situation, where I own a farmstead with multiple buildings. I put different interests in different buildings. Some of my interests are big and require a building larger than just a garage. This way I initially hoped to focus on one interest at a time, but quickly found that all of my interests were a mess. So I had to commit myself fully toward one interest to get it under control like "finish a ham radio project", before moving on to working on my personal VPN.

On a smaller scale, you can either use rooms in your home or if you're really tight on space, a designated drawer or box for each interest. Then commit yourself to having only one interest going at a time. In effect, you can only occupy one place, so I can only be in one building at a time and like wise you can only be in one room at a time. If you're in the drawer/box scenario, then commit to only having one drawer or box open at a time.

I have a ton of different interests right now, around half a dozen. I began typing out my interests and details about how I acquired each one but it was quickly becoming a wall of text. Anyway at first I worried about potential conflicts between my interests and that I would have to choose only a couple to focus on at a time, but then I realized that there was nothing preventing me from enjoying all of them at once. Since all of my interests involve works of fiction, I just combine elements and characters from each one to create my own imaginary world. Whereas a couple of months ago, my mind felt like it would explode from trying to juggle too many interests at once, now I have no problem embracing all of them equally. I think a big part of that was that one of my medications was overdue to be increased.