Special Interest "Rut"?

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Lately, I've lost interest in my previous special interest, and have nothing to "replace" it with. Most of the time, I don't lose interest in things, but it's overshadowed by something new which cause it to fade into the background. This is the first time I've actually gotten tired of my special interest, and now life feels... boring.

Can anyone relate to this?

If you want to know what it was that I was interested in, it was Hamtaro, the anime about hamsters.

Sometimes yes, but then something just pops up and I am off again on a new happy tangent.

Once I went two solid years without a special interest. It was a really boring and miserable time in my life. I was beginning to think I'd never have another special interest again, when all of a sudden, one day I gained a renewed appreciation for an old special interest from my childhood (Pokemon). Maybe you should try revisiting some of your former interests and see if it sparks anything new for you.

Are you completely over anime too? Maybe you could just find another show to like.

When I was on ADHD medication sometimes my special interests would disappear. I wasn't spending longer than an hour on anything and I never really had the kind of passion I used to have for certain interests. Thank God that's over now.

I know that transition period between losing one interest and gaining another.

I'm between special interests at the moment too. It's not a fun feeling. (In the meantime I've been obsessing over learning about autism, so WP has been a nice distraction!)

Personally, this has never happened to me. An interest may be overshadowed by another new one that's tangentially related, but never completely goes away. Even at times when I was extremely depressed, there was something I was interested in. I like what IdahoRose said though. Why not try revisiting old interests or looking into other anime? I loved Hamtaro BTW. I used to watch it all the time with my sister.

I am having the opposite problem, I seem to have too many interests at the moment. My brain cannot choose one and keeps jumping between them which is a bit annoying. Ergo I am not sure I have any special interests, as such, at the present time. I don't know if any of my present 4 main interests count (Paleo stuff, piano stuff, needle crafts, old movies).

I am of course interested in all things paleo but my Paleo diet is more of a lifestyle choice even if I am presently reading several books on the subject including a book on the diet itself by Loren Cordain, paleo for dummies, Primal body Primal mind and several books on the lifestyles of Palaeolithic peoples as understood by archaeological finds etc. These books include the paleolithic societies of Europe and Ice age Britain.


Picture titled: George Reads (george is my stuffed penguin).

I am about to bread (I meant to type break but 'bread my paleo' diet works considering it is supposed to be grain free and teacakes are made from wheat flour) my paleo diet though as I am desiring a toasted teacake with butter if the local shop has any.

My other interest at the moment is old movies and musicals. Thus far I have collected 55 (I just counted) of them on my hard drive and have Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn collections on DVD. I like stars such as Fred, Ginger Rogers, Paulette Goddard, Marylin Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Norman Wisdom, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Carry Grant, James Stewart and so on and so forth. I shall track down some Bob Hope and Bing Crosby later I think.

Those are the two things I have been focusing on for the last week or so. However I also have a yearning to:

1 Continue learning piano
2 Start my indexing system on shark species, attributes, classification, habitat etc. I'd also like a map of the British Isles so that I can record sightings of different species of sharks in British waters. I must get one from amazon....
3 Go back to my needle crafts and learn to crochet
4 Finish some unfinished sequin art projects I have yet to complete.
5 Do some reading on parapschology
6 Take more photographs of the coast/beautiful blue (ocean)
7 Learn to sketch and paint so that I can draw and paint the ocean
8 Learn pottery so I can make clay models of various shark species to go with my indexing system.
9 Go back to doing some of the jigsaw puzzles I own (about 15 of them although I used to have nearly 50) and which I have never done yet because I moved onto something else before I finished doing them all). I was collecting the classical collection of light range but stopped. I must must must see if I can still finish the collection. Also ravensburger puzzles are good.

All previous interests that have presently taken a back seat to the paleo diet and old movies. I am used to having two main interests but lately my brain seems to want to do all of the interests I have listed at once....I still get excited by all of them.

So many fascinating wonderful things to learn and do...so little time to do them in

Bah humbuggery.

For me, a new interest has always eventually surfaced - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.

May I opine here?

The whole thing about aspies and special interests...yes, I know it's a characteristic of people on the spectrum, but everyone's different. It seems to me that not everyone will even have a special interest. You can't lump all aspies into one category.

I feel like I've made a huge breakthrough just today, in learning to love my life and accept myself the way that I am, especially in terms of my ability to focus. I seem to vacillate between obsessive and scattered, and that's okay.

I've spent a lifetime trying to fight it, and to train myself to have a 'normal' type of focus, to no avail. No amount of discipline or willpower can change my basic neurology. I'm wired to either obsess over a special interest, or to be scattered and have no attention span at all, and that's just how it is.

I'm never going to be 'normal'. But I can learn to be happy, with the neurology I was born with. And that means reveling in my obsessions as they come, and seeing the in-between scattered phases as a fun opportunity to flit between lots of different things, until I find the next thing that inspires me!