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Special Interest, Too Many I Could Scream - Anyone else?

Rainbow Pixie

Since my autistic diagnosis, the one thing I get confused about is the topic of special interests. When I've read on various platforms that they can be very specific and narrow. But for me I have lots of interests and I get stressed when I can't do them all due to time etc. I have a dolls house which is a project for me as I'm obsessed with tiny things. I love tarot, I love crystals from a geological point of view. I love reading specific genre books (Skulduggery Pleasant books). And I have a passion for rock/metal music and playing my bass guitar. I love simulation video games and board games.

Now this is why I could scream, I will obsess over one thing for weeks, then suddenly I go to my other interest for weeks, then another etc. It's prompted people to say I have "fads" and that bothers me because actually I never stop liking an interest, I just come back to it at a later stage, sometimes months later. But with every interest I have I become fixated on everything about it. My bass guitar alongside my rock/metal music has been the only exception where I live and breathe that every single day. 

But then there's that occasion where I want to do all my interests all at once and because I can't I just get upset and do mine of them out of sheer frustration that I argue with myself over which one to do.

Does anybody else experience this? I do genuinely struggle with this to the point I've almost wished that I could like only one thing.

Parents

  • It is a continual source of frustration to me that there is not enough time in a week to engage fully with all my special interests. The way it ends up working out for me is that I am usually only obsessed with one or two of them at a time, but still engaging with the others. They cycle in and out over the course of a few years.

    For example, I used to be obsessed with running, entering races, following training schedules, etc. Currently that's a "background interest" - I'm still going for a jog around the park every morning, but I'm not obsessed with it. Whereas mathematics, which I studied when I was younger but went dormant as an interest for years, is back in full force and I'm spending a couple of hours every day on it (when freelance work doesn't force me to drop everything and do nothing but that for a day or two). I'm also getting back into dancing which I used to do every night of the week until I got sick of it around 2019. But writing fiction, which I was obsessed with 3-4 years ago, has become something I think about now and then but rarely get around to actually doing.

    If I could stick to one interest my whole life, think how good I'd be at it by now! But it doesn't work like that for me.

  • in reply to MrSolo

    I'm glad it's not just me. And that thought has crossed my mind too, if I kept sticking to that one thing I'd be great at it. 

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