Special interests

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Did the class crack up?

In early 2000s, I was in my 30s, I had a mental breakdown in public, after that I got sooooo extremely depressed,, my special interest was Bryan Adams, I would not shut up about him, I talked about him toooo much, once at a family party, I talked tooo much about him to one of my cousins, she was tired of hearing about him. I dreamt about him, a series of dreams. My mom thought I was too obsessed with him, he helped ALOT with my depression, one of my depression pills stopped working, my mom wanted me to continue taking it, if I stooped taking it, she would not spend $300

I don't remember.

Have you discovered a Youtube channel for your special interests yet? I have found ones for two of mine-Interstate Highways and US Presidential Elections.

Indulging my special interests feels like putting the final puzzle piece into a puzzle, and I am momentarily complete while I indulge. There's (usually...) nothing I'd rather do. They are:

Video games! Specifically the Touhou Project and Xenoblade serieses.

sapphic/trans media (Onimai, The Owl House, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Zombie Land Saga, Strawberry Fields Once Again, etc.)

Transformers (the robots, not the electrical device)

astronomy/speculative biology/quantum theory- sciences in general.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

music


Unfortunately no one around me shares these interests or taste.

Reading, and figuring things out. With both of those interests, I'll waste away entire days, barely taking short breaks for bodily needs and my dog.

Whether it's figuring out how something works, or what to do to make things work a certain way, I'll hyperfocus on things for hours and hours and hours. And because of that, certain types of video games are borderline dangerous for me lol. Games with a rich field of options, builds, talent/skill trees, and other kinds of variable gameplay mechanics will get me stuck in, with spreadsheets, graphs/graphics and notations helping me to manage things. Of course, it's not always video games. They just tend to be very suitable.

I've also delved into the various sciences, maths, philosophy (a lot of that because it helped me with a lot of things), art, cuisine, crafts/manufacturing/engineering, the various forms of contention (from trade to politics to warfare both physical and metaphysical to personal combat to interpersonal conflict to romantic/sexual relationships to dancing...), physical fitness, male fashion, literature and writing.... I donno. I go through a lot of phases. I don't often 'finish' things but do bounce back to a lot of previous projects and make wide, if slow, progresss.

Learning from books became a solace for me. A safe and happy place. Several times I've fallen asleep hugging a textbook to my chest lol, or brought a book to a social gathering. I ALWAYS have something to read while travelling. When I don't currently have a task fully occupying my mind I'll just start reading anything I can see.

Oh yeah and perfection/order-ism. Not sure if that's a special interest or compulsive obsession. Maybe both? I always have a strong impulse to do things as best as can be done....somewhat reasonably, and a frustrating dislike for when things aren't where they should be; ie: where it'd be most useful and efficient.

Oh right, the other question: What, to me, is a special interest? Something I'll focus hard on for long periods of time, which is greatly interesting to me and/or very enjoyable whilst also feeling unreasonably high on my priority list. It need not be something specific, like a person, thing or topic. It can be rather more abstract like the appreciation of a sensory phenomenon or a metaphysical concept or dynamic like my obsession with how things work. Of course, there is a sliding scale of intensity. I'm not really sure about where special interests and obsessions start or end.

Cinderash,

If you're in the States, have you heard of a show called "How It's Made"? There's a BUNCH of these episodes, I think on the National Geographic channel or one of those type channels. You name it, it's been covered. I've only watched one or two episodes, but I've read a lot of the program descriptions. How ANYTHING is made that people use in everyday life.

Haha yeah, I loved that show. Watched it as much as I could when I was younger. And coincidentally I ended up going to college for mechanical engineering, and learned a ton about manufacturing on my own besides.

There's actually this book in the industry nicknamed the Engineer/Machinists Bible (actually called Machinery's Handbook) that was first written in 1914 and has been continuously updated till this day. It has fine details on not just every metal manufacturing process but all the material science, math and metrics necessary to design and produce just about anything. I had read through a substantial amount of it, fantastically interesting!

Also managed to randomly discover a similar book that US Forestry Services produced called Wood handbook: Wood As An Engineering Material. Another really in depth textbook that made me super excited to have lol.

...if I had the money for hard copies, I would undoubtedly have a book hoarding problem lol.

There's plenty of great channels on youtube now that go very in-depth on a variety of things. I love finding what are essentially craftsmen vlogs, people carrying you through their process of designing and crafting.

This past year I found this lovely old project called 'Hands' from 1978 to 1989, which covered a variety of traditional Irish crafts. The old camera and audio format, the atmosphere of sounds, the voices of a people with such interesting accents, the Irish tunes, and the slower ways of life away from our modern information pollution and things... Such a relaxing watch.

If you're ever interested in a particular crafts/manufacturing thing, let me know. I might have a recommendation for you lol

Also, flicker fusion rates lol! I've always wanted to delve into that as a side interest to understand more about what I'm seeing, especially because of it's relation to EMR(light) and timespace. I'm enamored of sensory phenomenon and what they mean to us and our understand of the world we sense around us. Fluid dynamics was heckin interesting to me for it's relation to hearing. I love immersing myself in soundscapes or analyzing what I'm hearing to try and 'see' the physical word through my ears. Also, reverb of tubes, rods and sheets is just... *chefs kiss* muah! I love punching the solid metal railings in the stairs in some apartment buildings and just hearing the reverb emanating from several floors worth of connected metal tubes, bouncing around the vertical corridor.

The most interesting thing I built was a pay TV decoder box. This was in the 1980s and it could be done fairly easily. It never worked very well though. This was not really something I could have done on my own, but I had some coworkers who had engineered the box.

I was really more interested in digital devices. I modified a boat depth sounder to add an alarm. I modified a telephone to add an autodial for an alarm system. Later I learned to write Android apps and wrote one to display OBD-II data for my EV. This was a Nissan LEAF which did not use standard OBD-II protocols, but someone had figured out the protocols and put them online. I never had an idea for another app, but it anyone has any wacky ideas for something unique I sure I could get back into it. I'd love an excuse to upgrade to a better computer and waste a few hundred hours coding .

Parallel Universes
Diseases
Horror Movies
Movies
Scream Series
Sailor Moon
Digimon
The After Life
Baking
Cooking
Geography
Super Heroes
Art
World History
Abnormal Psychology
Autism
Disabilities
Writing
Reading
Old People
Artificial Intelligence
Trauma Core
Health Food
Music
Digital Media
Volunteering
Ego Death
Marketing
Dreams

Last edited by Diamondisis on 10 May 2023, 3:50 pm, edited 5 times in total.

My biggest one is language learning.

I've gotten pretty good with Polish, and next is to re-do Spanish on my own as school's way didn't really mesh with my learning style.

I'm not really sure, generally learning stuff, languages and math.

My wife though seems to have two. One of Colorado and, unfortunately, the second one is me. It took me nearly three and a half years to recognize what was going on there. I had no idea it was possible to have a person as a special interest.

I am still not really sure if the difference between a special interest and a hobby. I think my special interest is playing music. I don't talk about it with people I know who aren't involved (unless they ask) but I do think about it a bit. And if there is a concert by any of the groups I'm in during the day I will absolutely ditch work for it so I can perform. The only question will be will I pretend to be sick on the day or ask for leave in advance!
For a number of years while I was struggling through uni and very depressed my special interest was probably a forum which I quit a few years ago. Gave me a social outlet.
As a kid/teen, my special interest was always some branch of science, and I used to spend my free time at various libraries, reading all the books they had on the subject. I probably bothered my teachers quite a bit wanting to talk about it, and my dad (but he was happy to discuss it).

Most of the above are not associated with “autistic special interests” because the subject matter is wide, on nearly all of them they are just ordinary NT interests for example there are plenty of tv shows looking into the so called afterlife, marketing is a huge subject you can spend 3 years at Uni learning to become a marketing manager.

Autistic special interests are supposed to be extremely narrow which is why it’s considered abnormal or a problem if found with other impairments.

For example Wikipedia says having an interest in camera cases but not photography.

Having extensive knowledge of camera cases is considered to be of reduced usefulness unless it was your profession for example and you made a living through it.

^ that gives me some useful perspective. my SIs are of extremely reduced usefulness, considering the only thing I could do is be a scenario or storywriter for other projects.

additionally, it makes me realize that some things are merely interests, not special ones (Oh you're a villain alright, just not a super one!"), so I shall update the list

In order of intensity

Touhou Project series
Xenoblade Chronicles series
LGBT+ animation
the book I'm writing

I think anything can be a special interest. It depends on the intensity of the interest and if it keeps you from doing other things. Sometimes I am so obsessed with a special interest it's extremely difficult to get myself to do anything else because it's all I can think about. That certainly can be a problem sometimes.

In other words, it's not for us to say that a person's special interests aren't actually special interests because they could be.