Special Intrests,Comforting rituals and Odd collections

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After realizing I may very well may have ASD I started reading a few books on it and it got me reminiscing about my life before I had my family. I was thinking of all the wonderful things I use to do and collect and how comforting it was to do back then. I always am stressed and anxious now and I want to start doing all those wonderful things again.

Here is a bit of what I did back then.
When I was a kid I collected the coupons that came out of the store machines in the food isles.
I collected Betty Boop stuff but as a young adult I quit because everyone was collecting things FOR me and eventually it ruined my method of what I was collecting and I did not know how to tell them to stop.
I collected random odd candles, then I melted them and displayed the beautiful melted candles, I loved melting them and then they took on amazing shapes which only furthered my interest in them. (My ex husband threw them out because we moved and he did not think they were meaningful enough to take with us, it killed me a bit inside)
I use to go to bed every night, sip some wine out of a cute mini wine glass and watch a show. I found a mini wine glass the other day and I stared my ritual back up.
I collect rocks,sticks and any other nature like things.
I watch Titanic often when I wanna feel young again.

As an adult with children I now tend to organize their rooms, their toys and their clothes. It is fun and I love folding their little tiny outfits and grouping them. I sure miss my candles but it is hard to do something like that with two tiny ones wondering around. Fire + kids= danger!!
I usually use my sons interests as a way to collect items. I do not buy things for myself anymore so when he likes something I have to find puzzles, games, dinnerware, clothes and books. Which is great cause he may be autistic too and it has helped him feel better as well. As child I collected stuffed animals and notes from friends (what few I had) and anything and everything about Blink-182

I have always had the same special interests:
Holocaust-My main one I go back to a few times a year every year
Serial Killers- Once year
Psychology- Randomly through my life
Disease and illnesses- Random
Child Education and Discipline (I am a teacher and a mom)- Every few weeks to a few months
Animals and Reptiles- Random

So, is there anything you use to enjoy collecting or doing as a kid that is different now? Rituals that have come and gone? Special interests?Please share!!

I used to be passionately interested in philosophy and I collected the s**t out of philosophy books - I had thousands of books, the walls of several rooms of our house were lined with books... I spend all my money on books... of course I could never read them all

Then in a few years time I became disillusioned with the philosophy thing... Since I was (am) a perfectionist I could never finish the articles that I wanted to write for philosophy journals... So I started to hate philosophy. And then when we moved to another house I decided to sell all my books (and let me tell you, I didn't make a profit)...

Now, a few years later, I have bouts of extreme nostalgia when I think about those books and the safe little world called philosophy which I used to call my home... I really miss my library... I have a family now and I simply have no more time or money to collect the things I want to collect (e.g. guitars)... I'm so sorry I sold my library...

I used to know perfectly how my books were ordered... it was my safe place... lost forever

Well, you can do the candles in a room away from the wee mites. Best when they are asleep as they do not need watching then.

I still do the same ritual: As a child, I went to school, classes let out and I went straight to my father's machine shop. Though he has passed, I still live in that same house and when I leave from work, I head straight into his shop and tinker about. I pretty much have left everything as it was when I was a kid - not for nostalgia, but for the fact he was a perfectionist and it is hard to fix perfection.

This thread is kind of a relief. I remember all of my collections! I still have some, even if I can't do it so passionately with a family and all.

When I was a kid...

There were some shows I latched on to. This was before Netflix and TiVo, so I had to take great care to set the VCR. Power Rangers was my favorite and longest running obsession.

I was so happy to go to the grocery store. They had those machines with those tiny toys. I couldn't understand why other kids wanted candy, because it would be gone once they ate it. I'd have something cool like a figurine or a sticky hand, or a tiny slinky. Tiny versions of regular tings were so much cooler.

Little dollhouse stuff. I liked to set the dollhouse up like a real house with tiny details.

Oh, oh, Disney princess musicals! I knew every song from The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast!

Stuffed animals. Mostly bears.

When I was a teen...

Notebooks, paper, pens, folders, etc. It was even better if there was something about it that made it unique, like a colored pen or a patterned notebook.

Boxes. Little wooden boxes for holding little things. I still have my three most favorites.

Clocks and calendars. I've always had this thing for time and date.

Mementos. I would grab anything from an important event and store it in my lockbox. I wasn't beyond stealing little items of pretty much no value.

Now...

I have this thing about second hand things. It's not a money thing. I only like second hand or gifted jewelry or clothes. Especially jewelry. I maintain that I have lost or broken every single piece of jewelry I ever purchased for myself.

But, I like that these items have a history or meaning.

Semi-precious gemstones. I've gotten into the study of metaphysical properties. Besides, I like how they look and feel.

Psychology books! I'm nuts for psychology! Especially Jung, Skinner, and Ekman.

Journals. I collect them, because I will one day write in them. I have volumes of journals over seven consecutive years to prove that necessity.

I love that I'm not the only one who feels so passionately about certain objects and subjects!

I am not posting something about special interests or odd collections. I am posting about my comforting ritual. My days, apart from the bits that have to change are identical. It really soothes me to look at the time when I am about to do something on my schedule, for example, getting changed into my school uniform. When the numbers line up and when I do something at the right time I become very happy.
I like this aspect of myself.

Imaginary friends were the main and strongest interest that lasted throughout my childhood. I started having them when I was 3 and various groups of them came and went until I was around 16 or so. Oddly enough, many of them were based on people I knew in real life, because I didn`t understand them, but I wanted so badly to be part of their worlds...even at age 6. So my imaginary friends were a way I could play with the people I liked on my own terms since I didn`t like being rejected by them. These morphed into obsessions with people I knew in real life starting from when I was around 12 or so (maybe because people made fun of my imaginary friends as I got older).

They were the main reason I was assessed for Aspergers in the first place. When I was in grades kindergraten to 3, I would work them into almost everything I did and would talk about them incessantly to anyone who would listen. I often pretended I was talking to them in school, and it freaked the teachers out. At the time, my reality was more interesting to me and I didn`t care what anyone thought of it.

Other major special interests:
Logos - ages 2 to 7 or so
Bathing suit backs (my weirdest one!) - ages 6 to 10
Hospitals/surgery - ages 7-11
Factories/milk carton packaging - age 8-9
Vegetarianism (and trying to convert people into it) - age 6-11 (often came and went)
Beanie Babies - ages 9-13
Hip-hop/R&B/rap - ages 12-16 (experience a revival of this one sometimes )
Yearbooks/class lists/photos/lists of names - ages 14-17
Alternative music - ages 16-21
Bus maps and schedules - ages 17-18
Electronic music - ages 21-25
Person obsessions (varied in strength, came and went) - age 6 until age 23

Many odd rituals as a kid. I got VERY upset over any sort of change. I would also recite lines from movies, commercials and tv shows.
Today: interests are much less intense and I don`t really like talking about them with others. I have a parallel world where I imagine myself having a close-knit group of friends, have a very minor person obsession which I am trying to get rid of, and really enjoy certain kinds of music, art and media. I also really enjoy developing my social skills further by spending time with my NT friends and discreetly listening to NTs in social situations and then applying similar techniques they have used myself when with others. (I steer away from these techniques with people on the spectrum as I strongly feel that it is their choice to adopt NT social skills.) I am also interested in certain kinds of drugs (not doing them, but observing their effects on others through observations, case studies etc.).

I've gone through obsessions with hospitals too and trying to solve crimes going on at the time, spying became an obsession after seeing Hariet the Spy. Used to be obsessed with the movie Grease as a child then Switzerland then California... now pretty much everything but mainly the crime solving.

In the broadest sense, imaginary friends have been my lifelong interest. Virtually all of my other interests are linked to imaginary friends in some way. It started at the age of 5, when I became interested in the movie Balto and decided on a whim one day to have the titular character as my imaginary friend. I was never very good at creating my own imaginary friends, so I just borrow characters from whatever form of media I happen to be interested in at a given time.

To this day, I still have imaginary friends (even though I don't keep the same imaginary friends for longer than about 3 years at most). I have tried to have other interests, but everything else pales in comparison to having imaginary friends.

To those of you who don't know what it's like to have imaginary friends, I would like to explain how it works for me. Note that the way I do it probably isn't the way other people who have imaginary friends do it.

When I decide to have a character as an imaginary friend, I start picturing them living in an imagined environment. This environment is usually a specific house that I used to live in, one that was spacious and had a layout that I liked. I can still easily picture it in my mind even though it has been about 5 or 6 years since I lived there. I usually pair up the character with another one so that they can be in a romantic relationship and never feel lonely, though there have been cases where I have been unable to find a suitable match for a character, and so they have remained single.

When I pace or run and listen to music, that's when my whole imaginary world comes alive and feels the most "real" to me. Beautiful music videos starring my imaginary friends play out in my mind's eye just as though I were watching them on TV. Sometimes I subconsciously reach out my hand, as if to touch them.

I rarely interact with my imaginary friends directly, but I always feel their presence, as though they were spirits.

That's all I can think to type for now.