How do you choose your special interest?

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Are there any factors which affects what your special interest is?
E.g. does age/ability/personality have any influence? Or maybe if your are depressed/happy?

I'm sorry for being vague. I suppose I'm wondering how much choice people have over choosing their special interests or if is something much deeper than that which influences their choice and they are just sort of drawn to it.
Thanks

Usually a special interest chooses me.
But really it's more likely if I see a problem and if I start thinking about it and start seeing a possible solution axis I'm likely to follow it.

Mine often come from media, i.e TV or film.
I get obsessed with a character or an idea and just follow it till I get bored, then I find a new one.

I guess the answer would be that it's the same reason any person is interested in anything, which is just the person that they are. The things people are interested in are so intertwined with a persons identity I don't think you can really weed out the reasons and causes in a general sense. I'm assuming, though, that 'special interests' are just normal interests expressed in an ASD way. Personal experience, my special interests always feel like I've suddenly stumbled upon some hidden, extremely detailed secret world. I don't think I've ever sought something out, it's always been some random game or a scene from a TV show. I don't think they've really followed any rules, a few of them actually surprised me (e.g. suddenly I like nothing but screamo, Law and Order, etc.), and then it's my whole life.

Do you guys think special interests are more tolerated with females or males? At what age was your first special interest? Did you ever make your special interests profitable?

My special interests are like a tree. Branches often grow, expand, branch off or die.
My original special interest is music.
Then my special interest became playing music.
That turned into playing piano.
Playing piano turned into being obsessed with Yamaha keyboards.
I got a bit interested in electronics.
That turned into being interested in computers and the internet.
That interest turned into web design.
When I got bored of web design I started getting interested in discovering new music, specifically indie rock.
That interest turned into Scandinavian indie rock.
That turned into Icelandic music.
That interest turned into Icelandic culture.
That interest turned into Icelandic language. While I was learning Icelandic I often listened to traditional Finnish music to take a break from Icelandic.
That interest turned into Nordic languages.
That turned into languages in general.
I got bored of languages, so I listened to more Finnish music.
I started to get obsessed with Finnish folk music.
I started to get interested in traditional Finnish accordion music.
Then I got interested in playing accordion and music in general.

I have other "interest trees" and isolated special interests, but the "music tree" is the biggest. A lot of times my interests are just old interests returning. I will probably get interested in web design again.

I think it should be possible to partly select special interests, but as others have claimed, they sometimes tend to choose you.

IT/electronics thread of interests:
I started out with math in high-school
When I got my first computer (a ZX80), I become interested in computers and learned Z80 assembly
The interest in computers led to getting interested in electronics, so I started building small devices
The interest in electronics made me enroll in the MSc in electronics (which I completed easily as most of it was interesting to me)
At my first work I got fed-up with Microsoft DOS (trying to multitask), so I started my OS project
Since I wanted to work closer to hardware, I switched work to a position where I would eventually be able to work on terminals
On my new work I started using my OS as a debug tool as the platform we used lacked decent debugging
A few years ago we started to ship PC-platform terminals based on my OS (which eventually made this project commercial)

Neurodiversity thread of interests:
It was my children (and social authorities) that led me to study autism in 2000
In 2001 I wrote down the Neanderthal theory in response to a total failure of psychiatry to explain mine and my childrens problems and talents
In 2002-2003 I started to collect data to try to prove some key predictions in the Neanderthal theory
In 2004 I constructed the first Aspie Quiz with a friend. The idea was to create an independent test for autistic traits
In 2006 I discovered the main factors, which led to the "independent" neurodiversity definition
Somewhere around 2008 I wrote the first manuscript about Aspie Quiz. It wasn't until august 2013 that I finally got it accepted after multiple failures

Then there are multiple sub-threads, like building renewable energy systems (solar and wind based), which I realized a few years ago, and the interest in the natural social and mating behavior of neurodiversity which I still work on.

My special interests seem to choose me. They always came to me in times of trouble and they help me through the hard times and stay with me through the good times.