Trying to live without obsessive interest

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Do you think general apathy for anything who is not an obsessive interest?
In these days, I blocked all the webpages about my previous obsessive interest. Now I'm trying to fill my free time with some books between the moments of silence, but I think I feel some general apathy to anything.

P.D. I think wrongplanet.net is turning in a new special interest

I like reading about Colombia.

It's an up-and-coming nation. Venezuela should take tips from it.

My own special interests are fairly broad-range and I'm not really disinterested in other subjects. But I often find learning curves rather painful, and my first gut reaction to the notion of studying this or that can be quite negative, if it doesn't look pretty straightforward or doesn't easily map onto what I already know. I seem to have a need to keep my brain clear of fog, so if I'm investigating one thing, other stuff just gets in my way.

Some years ago I began to notice that getting too fixated on a special interest for too long could be quite dangerous, in that the rest of my life's activities would grind to a halt. It came to a head when I'd been immersed in some interest or other for a long time, and I started getting letters from service providers asking me to verify that I hadn't moved out of my home. I began to apply some self-discipline and avoided feeding my passions. But I became rather miserable, not terribly so but not exactly happy either. It was only when I returned to a computer music project that I realised what I'd been missing - suddenly I felt alive again. So my advice would be not to try to live without special interests, but to just try to keep some kind of healthy balance. But I don't know how typical my special interest thing is among ASDers. It could be that I've been lucky enough to be less "addicted" to these things than many folks, or maybe it's an age-related thing, it might take a while for life to teach an individual on a deep level that neglecting other matters too much can be harmful.

Can you use your special interest to develop some skills that could turn into a career eventually?

My special interests branch out into all kinds of areas. I am interested in a lot of different things.

As a Colombian, I'm not sure about that statement

Yeah. Columbia has had chronic warfare (both political, and narco) forever. And its always been the ugly sister of Venezuela.

Its only been since Hugo Chavez took charge in Venezuela that the rather stable and prosperous Venezuela has recently gone off the rails. Columbia has also recently made some progress toward internal peace. But its hardly a role model for another country yet.

yeah, if i'm not interested in something i cba with doing anything related to it. if it is something required to function in society i will delay/put it off as long as possible to avoid doing it.

people think i am dismissive of their interests, which is not really true ... i am just not interested in anything but my own interests. sometimes there is overlap, sometimes not.

I don't think it's possible not to have a special interest. I have my long standing interest in astronomy. This took over for a while but I seem to have in under control, English weather does that: Clouds = no astronomy. Since I have all the gear I need (another eyepiece arrived this morning) and a very large telescope I have stopped obsessing over Astro gear.

As one of the other posters suggested the only real way of getting a handle on things sometimes is to use your special interest into a career. My real special interest in autism and I have made a career out of it in one way or another. Tomorrow I am going for a job interview at the university but employed by a national autism charity. I hope I get it as it would mean a lot to me. It's either that or back to SEN supply teaching

OH this is terrible! I'm going through this right now, and it is awful not having a special interest at the moment. Sure, my brain will probably "latch onto" something eventually, but for the time being I don't have an intense interest (unless you count my interest in Stampy Cat, which seems to be slowly coming back again since I forced myself to stop posting here a lot). I can't even focus on anything that isn't a special interest !

I have tried blocking a website, changing passwords to things I could never remember etc, it never works. There is away around everything

I'm still lurking here ^^^^^^

I answered the lurker

I've never been without a special interest. I only have a "rambling phase" where I can't stop thinking about a subject or talking about a subject when it's new, but even when that is over and the interests aren't as intense, I still fall back into my long-term special interests. Like, I haven't had a "rambling phase" since about 2010, but I still indulge in my main special interests, in some way, most days.

The 'peace' thing is complicated and there is a lot of discussion about it inside the country, the peace agreement has also good things and bad things, and it also could be used to implant gender ideology in the country.

About Venezuela, I think the two countries are rather similar, and none of them precisely and example for other countries.